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LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN 
COLUMBIA COLLEGE 



With Full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, and Other 
Explanatory and Illustrative Matter. Crown Svo. Cloth. 

1. IRVLNG'S TALES OF A TRAVELLER. With Introduction 

by Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia College, 
and Notes by the Editor of the Series. 

2. GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER. Edited by Professor 

Robert Herrick, of the University of Chicago. 

3. SCOTT'S WOODSTOCK. Edited by Professor Bliss Perry, 

of Princeton College. 

4. DEFOES HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 

Edited by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of Columbia Col- 
lege. 

5. WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL ORATION, together 

with other Addresses relating to the Revolution. Edited 
by Professor F. N. Scott, of the University of Michigan. 

6. MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. Edited by J. G. 

Croswell, Esq., Head-Master of the Brearley School, 
formerly Assistant Professor in Harvard University. 

7. SHAKSPERE'S A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Edited 

by Professor G. P. Baker, of Harvard University. 

8. MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, AND 

LYCIDAS. Edited by Professor W. P. Trent, of the Uni- 
versity of the South. 

9. SHAKSPERE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE. Edited by Pro- 

fessor Francis B. Gummere, of Haverford College. 

Other volumes are in preparation. 







THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
(After a photograph by Claudet) 



Xongmans' lEnglfsb Classics 



MACAULAY'S 



ESSAY ON MILTON 



EDITED 

WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 



JAMES GKEENLEAE CROSWELL, A.B. 

HEAD-MASTER OF THE BREARLEY SCHOOL; FORMERLY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF 
GREEK IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




1 OF 



?•*«& 






I 



NEW YOEK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

AND LONDON 
1895 






Copyright, 1895 

BY 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



PREFACE 

It is hard for an editor of a book designed for formal 
study to determine precisely what parts of the learning 
that has gathered about his subject should be regarded as 
indispensable to young students. It is harder still for the 
editor of a book designated, in the new uniform entrance 
requirements, for current reading and not for formal 
study, to determine what he may assume as already a part 
of the pupil's knowledge. Two methods of treatment at 
once suggest themselves. He may annotate the text very 
sparingly, on the assumption that an intelligent boy knows 
enough to read ordinary English prose literature under- 
standingly, and should be forced to find out for himself the 
meaning of words or allusions that he does not compre- 
hend. Or he may annotate profusely, on the much 
sounder assumption that boys and girls are not living dic- 
tionaries and encyclopaedias, and scarcely ought to be ex- 
pected to interrupt reading which they are encouraged to 
enjoy in order to search various volumes for information 
that might just as well be put at once before them. Both 
extremes the editor of the present volume has tried to 
avoid. He has endeavored to give the pupil such facts 
as will enable him to read rapidly and understanding^ ; 
he has endeavored also to stimulate in the pupil an intelli- 
gent curiosity in regard to matters worth further investi- 
gation and further knowledge. 

This edition of Macaulay's essay follows the authoritative 
text of which Longmans, Green, and Co. are the pub- 
lishers. J. G. C. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction ix 

Suggestions for Teachers and Students . . . xxxviii 

Chronological Table 1-lii 

Essay on Milton 1 



INTRODUCTION 



(Summary of Macaulay's Essay.) 

§§ 1-8. Prefatory Remarks. Description of a theological work by 
John Milton, lately discovered. 

§§ 8-49. First Division of the Essay: Milton's Poetry. 

§§ 8-18. First topic : Is Milton's place among the greatest masters ? 
Yes, for he triumphed over the difficulty of writing poetry in the 
midst of a highly civilized society. A discussion of the relation of 
poetry to civilization. 

§§ 18-20. Second topic : Milton's Latin poetry. 

%% 20-25. Third topic : Some striking characteristics of Milton's poetic 
methods. A description of the effect produced by the peculiar sug- 
gestioeness of the words he uses. Examples, L Allegro and 11 Pen- 
seroso. 

§§ 25-30. Fourth topic : Milton's dramatic poetry. Like the Greek 
drama, it has much of the lyric character. The Greek drama and 
Samson Agonistes ; Comus and the Italian Masques. 

§§ 30-47. Fifth topic : Paradise Lost. Parallel between Milton and 
Dante. A discussion of Milton s superiority in the management of 
the agency of supernatural beings. 

§§ 47-49. Sixth topic : The sonnets. 

§§ 49-88. Second Division of the Essay : Milton's conduct as 
a citizen. The conduct of his party associates. §§ 49-72. 
First topic : Milton's joining the party of the Parliament in 1642. 
§§ 49-51. Under the impressions derived from seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth century literature, many Englishmen fail to see that the Long 
Parliament was defending principles of government accepted, by all 
England since 1688, and now struggling for recognition in the rest 
of the world. §§ 51-57. The rebellion of Parliament against 
Gharles I. is therefore justified by a comparison, point by point, with 
the glorious Bevolution dethroning James II. §§ 57-72. Admitting, 
then, the justice of Parliament's quarrel with the king, was their 
rebellion too strong a measure f When are revolutions justified f 



X INTRODUCTION 

§g 72-78. Second topic : Miltons association with the Regicides and 
Cromwell. §§ 72-75. The execution of Charles not so very different 
a measure from the deposition of James. But even if one disap- 
>j roves <>f the regicide one may admit the necessity of defending it ut 
that time. §§ 75-78. Discuss. on of CronacelCs good government 
compared with Parliament' s betrayal of trust on one sine arid the 
Stuart misgomrnment on the other. 

§§ 78-87. Third topic : Milton's contemporaries classified and described. 
§§ 79-84. The Puritans. § 84. The Heathens. § 85. The Royal- 
ists. § 86. Milton's own character compounded of many different 
strains. 

§§ 87-92. Third Division of the Essay : Milton s Prose-writ - 
ings. His pamphlets devoted to the emancipation of human 
thought. 

§§ 92 to End. Conclusion. A vision of Milton. 

1. The Essay on Milton was published in the Edinburgh 
Review in August, 1825. The author was born in 1800, 
and was thus at the date of publication just twenty-five 
years old. Except for some papers in Knight's Quarterly, 
one of which, " Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cow- 
ley and Mr. John Milton touching the Great Civil "War," 
covers some of the ground of this essay, there was prac- 
tically as yet nothing of Macaulay's in print. Yet 
though it was thus an experiment from a comparatively 
untried man, this article proved to be one of those aston- 
ishing successes which now and then befall new authors. 
Like Lord Byron, the young Macaulay " awoke one morn- 
ing and found himself famous." He became at once after 
the publication of this essay one of the best-known men in 
England. "The family breakfast-table in Bloomsburv/' 
says his sister, " was covered with cards of invitation to 
dinner from every quarter of London." He was made a 
friend by men of letters, scholars, and statesmen ; and 
from this time his life ran on in that almost unbroken 
current of agreeable and well-rewarded industry which 
has been made the subject of one of the most charming 



INTROD TJCTION xi 

biographies in the world, Sir George Trevelyan's "Life 
and Letters of Lord Macaulay." 

2. As we are thus dealing with what was practically 
Macaulay's first great work, we might naturally expect to 
find in it some of the characteristic weaknesses of a novice. 
Macaulay himself, in the preface to the collection of his 
essays made in 1843, found this fault with it. "The 
criticism on Milton/' says he, " which was written when 
the author was just from college, contains scarcely a para- 
graph such as his matured judgment approves, and re- 
mains overloaded with faulty and ungraceful ornament." 
Now, blemishes of this sort, to be sure, do appear. Mat- 
thew Arnold, for instance, well objects to the description 
of Milton's " conception of love" (page 45) that it is, when 
analyzed, nothing but nonsense ; Frederic Harrison well 
objects to his description of the Eestoration (page 70) that 
it is really too much to say of the careless and good-nat- 
ured Charles II. that he was " a cruel idol propitiated by 
the best blood of England's children." Any careful 
reader of the essay will find almost anywhere other similar 
exaggerations of phrase. It is not true, for instance, that 
Milton died in a "hovel" or in "disgrace;" nor would 
Milton's daughters have "contested" with anybody the 
privilege of reading Greek to him. But, on the whole, 
considered as the work of a "young man just from col- 
lege," the essay is particularly free from the faults of 
youth. Such faults as it has are at worst pleasing faults, 
characteristic of Macaulay's best writing all his life long. 
It is full of vivid color, smartly written, and showing 
already the certain touch of a master of historical compo- 
sition. 

3. But there are criticisms which have been made upon 
the essay with more justice than these. For one thing, 
critics have said that, considered as a literary study, it does 
not contain a thorough discussion of Milton's work. Very 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

important poems are in fact ignored entirely. They com- 
plain of a memorial of Milton which does not mention 
"The Ode on the Nativity " at all, that poem which Hal- 
lam called "the most beautiful poem in the English lan- 
guage," or even allude to "Lycidas," which Pattison says 
is "the high- water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's 
own production." Then again, to other critics, the tone 
of perpetual eulogy of Milton's conduct seems over-strained 
and almost too contentious. The thing sounds like an 
argument in a debate, wherein the reader will finally be 
expected to give a vote. But there is a special reason in 
Macaulay's situation not only for the narrow scope of the 
treatment of Milton but also for the argumentative strain. 
4. Political prejudice in Macaulay's day still interfered 
with men's estimate of John Milton. The judgment of 
society in 1825, which is reflected in the Waverley Novels, 
like " Woodstock," for instance, was the judgment which 
might be passed upon Milton's work by a good English 
Tory, in a day when, " a youth of Tory family," says 
Lord Cockburn, " who was discovered to have a leaning to 
the doctrines of the opposition, was considered a lost son." 
Nothing contributed more to strengthen and to prolong 
the unjust views of the Tories about Milton than the uni- 
versal reading of the life of Milton composed by the 
great eighteenth-century critic, Dr. Samuel Johnson. It 
was so good a book that in 1825 it was, so to speak, the 
regular authoritative source of information about Milton. 
But Dr. Johnson was haunted by the tradition of the cava- 
liers that any rebel against the king must have been either 
a self-deceived hypocrite or else "dishonest." Apparently 
he thought this evil thing about Milton. No one can im- 
agine without reading the book how readily this extraordi- 
nary biographer takes any chance to discredit the motives 
of Milton's acts, and how much this general prejudice 
against the poet's political conduct blinds him to the liter- 



INTRODUCTION Xlll 

ary quality of Milton's work. Furthermore, the Doctor's 
judgment of Milton's work, even where he forgets his 
politics, is warped by continual reference to conventional 
rules which he considered authoritative principles in aes- 
thetics. There is a Toryism even in his literary sympa- 
thies. A few quotations from the "Life" will exhibit 
this odd tone, and will explain why we hear in the Essay 
so much about Dr. Johnson, as well as about " certain 
critics," which phrase usually means Dr. Johnson. 

5. First, Dr. Johnson makes all the use he can of doubt- 
ful notices in Milton's biographers to the possible discredit 
of the poet's character. A good example is his emphatic, 
reference to Aubrey's incorrect statement that Milton was 
" whipt " at college, or, in Johnsonese, " suffered the pub- 
lic indignity of corporal correction." Secondly, Dr. John- 
son twists the most innocent and honorable acts into causes 
of offence and ridicule when he recalls Milton's relations to 
Church and King. For instance, when the civil war broke 
out, Milton gave up his journey to Italy, closed the " sweet- 
scented manuscript of youth," and returned at once to give 
his life to the Puritan cause. He became, as Macaulay 
says, "the devoted and eloquent literary champion " of the 
principles of liberty. While thus contending on the side 
of Parliament by his pen, he supported himself by teach- 
ing a few pupils. " He taught," says Philips, one of the 
scholars, his sister's son, " only relations and the sons of 
gentlemen that were his friends ; he never set up for a 
publick school to teach all the young fry of a parish." At 
the present day this act is justly considered one of his best 
titles to our respect and admiration. But listen to the 
Tory Doctor. " Let not our veneration for Milton," says 
Johnson, f ' forbid us to look with some degree of merri- 
ment on great promises and small performance, on the 
man who hastens home because his countrymen are con- 
tending for their liberty, and when he reaches the scene 



to 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

of action vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding 
school." Again, Milton's pamphlets doubtless were writ- 
ten in a savage tone. KTo editorial contests in any political 
controversy of our day could now be conducted so fiercely. 
" Milton's capacity for emotion/' says Pattison, " when 
once he became champion of a cause, could not be con- 
tained within the bounds of ordinary speech. It breaks 
into terrific blasts of vituperation, beneath which the very 
language creaks, as the timbers of a ship in a storm." But 
Johnson's word for this Miltonic wrath is "malignity." 
"Hell grows darker at his frown," quotes the Doctor. 

6. These hostile feelings might be pardoned to the devout 
Toryism of Johnson if he had kept them for the life and 
political acts of Milton. What Macaulay could not pardon 
was the jealous tone of his literary criticism. Who, in- 
deed, could accept calmly this remark, applied in Johnson's 
"Life" to the great Sonnet XXIII. ? "His wife died, 
and he honoured her memory with a poor sonnet." Or 
this, of the splendid testimonial to Cromwell ? " Caesar, 
when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not 
more servile or more elegant flattery." Or this, about 
Lycidas ? " The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, 
the numbers unpleasing. Its form is that of a pastoral ; 
easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting." The sonnets Dr. 
Johnson naturally hated ; they are full of Puritanism. But 
he might have found better words to say of them than 
these : "Of the best [sonnets] it can only be said they are 
not bad, and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-first are 
truly entitled to this slender commendation." Even over 
"Paradise Lost," whose excellences are generally com- 
mended by him, though accounted for rather curiously, 
Johnson has to quarrel with the poet for what he main- 
tains to be his illogical confusions of spirit and matter and 
his incongruous pictures of angelic substance. Finally, 
Milton's splendid style, which Matthew Arnold named the 



INTRODUCTION XV 

only specimen in our literature of the " grand style " of 
Homer and Dante, Dr. Johnson asserts is founded "on a 
perverse and pedantic principle."" All this is certainly the 
product of a critical faculty judging through fogs of polit- 
ical prejudice and under the iron rules of dogmatic critical 
tradition. 

7. But the controversial purposes of Macaulay in the 
article on Milton published in the great Whig review went 
further than the holding of a critical tournament with Dr. 
Johnson. All the second half of the essay has little to do 
with literature. It is devoted to the condemnation of the 
Stuarts, and the eulogy of the Puritans, and it has a 
warmth reflected from Macaulay's present political sym- 
pathies, and from the new-born ardor for freedom of the 
young English Liberals of 1825. Under cover of a histor- 
ical study of John Milton, Macaulay has here written a 
very good Whig party pamphlet. A few words, therefore, 
in explanation of the contemporary political situation of 
1825 will make the spirit of the latter part of the essay 
clearer and perhaps more interesting to readers of the pres- 
ent day. 

8. The year 1825. was a year full of storm in many quar- 
ters of the sky. "Those mighty principles which have 
worked their way into the depths of American forests, 
which have roused Greece from the slavery and degrada- 
tion of two thousand years, and which, from one end of 
Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in 
the hearts of the oppressed and loosed the knees of the 
oppressors with an unwonted fear/' were likewise working 
in the hearts of young Englishmen of Macaulay's age. 
Two opposite ideals of government, likened by Macaulay 
to the two gods of the Persian theology, Oromasdes 
and Arimanes, were standing face to face in Europe as 
they stood in the days of the Stuarts. In England the 
party of popular government was represented by the 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Whigs and the Liberal section of the Tory party acting 
under Canning ; the party of firm monarchical principles 
was represented by the King (George IV. ), the Prime 
Minister, Lord Liverpool, — the older Tory, party, contain- 
ing far the larger part of English society. In Europe at 
large the principle of firm despotic authority was then 
maintained by the " Holy Alliance." This was a union 
formed by the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, 
and largely directed by the policy of Prince Metternich, 
the Austrian minister. This alliance had been first made 
after Waterloo, when there fell upon all Europe a great 
desire for peace. Strong government under well-consti- 
tuted authority seemed desirable then to every nation. All 
were weary of the upturnings of the French Revolution. 
These monarchs guaranteed that in all Europe there should 
be no more disturbance. " Useful or necessary changes 
in legislation," they said in a famous circular letter, "and 
in the administration of states ought only to emanate 
from the free-will and the intelligent and well-weighed 
conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible 
for power." This was a tone acceptable even to English 
policy in that year. But opposition was sure to come soon, 
and, oddly enough, the first opposition to the principles of 
the alliance occurred in Spain. Spain had been restored, 
after the overthrow of Napoleon, to its old Bourbon king, 
Ferdinand the Seventh. Ferdinand had promptly reversed 
all measures of progress taken in that kingdom since 
1812, and thereby quarrelled with his liberal subjects. 
Serious rioting resulted ; in spite of the efforts of the 
Holy Alliance in the king's cause, neither side was com- 
pletely successful. The infection of revolt spread to the 
Spanish colonies in America. They seized the moment 
to rebel against Spain, and under the leadership of men 
like the great Bolivar, in the "depths of the American 
forests," the colonies broke away from the mother-coun- 



ItfTR OB UGTtON xvii 

try and founded the present South American republics, 
All this movement was watched in England with much 
sympathy for the insurgents, Young Englishmen even 
served in the armies and navies of the South American 
rebels. Next came Italy. In Naples also there was at 
this time an absolute monarch of Spanish descent. Here, 
also, the people rebelled and secured a constitution. But, 
though not successful in Spanish affairs, the Holy Alli- 
ance succeeded in Italy in crushing the popular move- 
ment. Austrian troops were sent in and took away, in the 
name of religion and good government, the hopes of free- 
dom which the Neapolitans and Sicilians had begun to 
enjoy. Still another uprising was in Macaulay^s mind as 
he wrote the story of Milton. Greece had just revolted 
against her Turkish masters. Even while this essay was 
penned, the heroic defence of Missolonghi was taking 
place ; and with the enthusiastic support of many cultured 
and high-spirited young men from all the nations of the 
Christian world, Greece was just winning for herself her 
title to independence. With these great struggles all over 
the world going on before his eyes, there was a peculiar 
zest for Macaulay, who loved to identify present politics 
and past history, in discussing just then the great historic 
conflicts of the Stuarts and the people of England over the 
same momentous problems of government which were then 
agitating the nations of Continental Europe. Lastly, Ma- 
caulay wrote this essay with a heart full of interest in a 
great political movement in England itself, namely, the 
effort making in 1825 for the relief of his Catholic fellow- 
citizens from their civil disabilities. The laws against 
Catholics in Great Britain, and still more in Ireland, since 
the time of William and Anne, had been, as is well known, 
most severe. Catholics were excluded from the succes- 
sion to the crown of England after the Revolution of 
1688. But they were also excluded from the right to sit 



xvill INTRODUCTION 

in Parliament, or to hold any magistracy or receive de- 
grees at the universities. Irish Catholics were practically 
put in absolute subjection to a Protestant Parliament sup- 
ported by English arms in Dublin. This Parliament, dur- 
ing the eighteenth century, ordained that no Catholic might 
carry arms, buy or inherit real estate, or own a horse worth 
more than £5. Under such laws the country was almost 
ruined commercially and socially, though the Catholic 
church rather increased in numbers. Now in 1825 Ireland 
was struggling to obtain some relief. The country had 
been agitated by this effort for a generation. Ireland was 
now divided into two camps, the Orange lodges of Protest- 
ants on one side, the Catholic Association and the Eibbon- 
men on the other. The two sides vied with each other in 
hatred and outrage. The English nation divided over 
them. Liberals in both parties took up the cause of 
Catholic emancipation. Lord Althorp, afterward the 
champion of the Keform Bill, and the Whig Lord Lans- 
downe, who, in 1830, helped Macaulay into Parliament, 
were endeavoring once more to obtain civil equality for 
their Catholic fellow-citizens. The "unbending Tories," 
like Wellington and Peel, on the other side, resisted 
change, quoting, to defend their ideas of the proper 
method of dealing with Irish Catholics, the example of 
the great Whig hero, William the Third. But a bill for 
the relief of the Catholics had just passed the Commons. 
It was, however, rejected in the Lords under the influ- 
ence of the Tories. The Eoyal Duke of York, at that 
time a possible heir to the throne, came down and made a 
speech on the extreme Protestant side, which was very in- 
fluential in defeating the bill. The " victory " of the anti- 
Catholics was celebrated with rejoicing. The Protestants 
had a public dinner in London in honor of it, at which 
the Duke of York drank the "glorious and immortal 
memory of William III." amid wild cheering. 



INTRODUCTION XIX 

9. In a year of such political excitement we can imagine 
the feelings which were animating the young author of this 
paper. Such are the feelings we must in a measure under- 
stand if we would appreciate his work rightly. We must 
not gauge it solely as a contribution to the study of Milton's 
place in English literature. We must be prepared to find 
political sympathies getting uppermost in the author's 
interest in the subject, and we shall consequently find that 
his political paragraphs, as, for example, the eulogy of the 
Puritans on page 78, are far the best part of the essay. 
Let us freely admit that there is much justification for 
this way of treating Milton. With all due respect to 
English literature, in which Milton's poetry is so bright a 
glory, the making of verses has not been the only ser- 
vice or even the chief service of the English race to man- 
kind. When the final account of things is made up, Eng- 
land will be able to say of her history something in the strain 
of Virgil's proud verses about Eome in the Sixth Book of 
the "iEneid." Whatever artistic and literary glories other 
nations may have had, the English have built the greatest 
political structures of popular representative government 
in all the world. And it has been again and again due to 
Anglo-Saxon history, in both hemispheres, especially of 
the last three hundred years, that "government of the 
people, for the people, by the people" has not perished 
from the earth. So that Milton, the Puritan Secretary of 
the Commonwealth, may well be remembered in any criti- 
cal account of him as gratefully as Milton the poet and 
scholar. As Heine, the German poet, said of himself, 
Macaulay's essay seems justly to say of Milton,." Lay not 
laurel-leaves on that coffin, but a sword. For he was a 
good soldier in the warfare of humanity." 

10. John Milton had three threads of three widely dif- 
ferent destinies spun into one for him by the Fates. The 
first part of his life, his boyhood and family history, his 



xx IN TROD UGT1 ON 

study and private reading, connected him with the Eng- 
land of his father, with music and song, with the happy 
singers of Elizabeth's day, whose influence is so plain in 
his early poetry. The second part of his life, his educa- 
tion at school and college, tied him to the Puritans, to the 
"rigorous teachers who seized his youth/' moulding his 
life by the high religious purposes of that noble but un- 
happy party ; and the third cord, red and dismal, running 
through the life and occupations of his manhood, bound 
him to the troubled life of political dissension in the blood- 
stained England of Charles and of Cromwell. In " Para- 
dise Lost" one sees at last these influences erecting to- 
gether an harmonious whole of unique beauty. That is a 
great song of a true-born singer relating in the imagery of 
an immortal epic the origin of all the world's sorrows as a 
blind Puritan of the lost Commonwealth had had knowl- 
edge of them. The first part of his life promised him only 
happiness in the joy of his chosen art of poetry. He was 
born in 1608, and like Chaucer, Spenser, Cowley, and 
Keats, in the city of London itself. The name of the 
house of his birth was the " Spread Eagle." It was in 
Bread Street, Cheapside ; but like the other houses which 
Milton lived in, it exists no longer. Though not the eld- 
est, he was the very dearest son of his father, described as 
" an ingeniose man delighting in musique," who gave him a 
careful education at St. Paul's school and at home also. In 
books John Milton was from the tenderest years a student. 
His brother relates that "when he went to schoole, w^hen 
he was very younge, he studied very hard and sate up very 
late : commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night, and 
his father ordered the mayde to sitt up for him ; and in 
those yeares [10] he composed many copies of verses which 
might well become a ripe age. And was a very hard stu- 
dent in the University and performed all his exercises there 
with very good applause." He went to Christ College in 



INTR OB UCTION xxi 

the Puritan University of Cambridge at the age of seven- 
teen, remaining there till he was twenty-four. The boys 
there called him " The Lady" because of his fair complex- 
ion, graceful appearance, and a certain haughty delicacy of 
taste and habit. While here he wrote among other things 
the great "Ode on the Nativity/' the "Sonnet on arriv- 
ing at the Age of Twenty-three," and a good deal of Latin 
verse. After leaving college he had been meaning to take 
orders. But he felt himself at that time unable to be- 
come a minister of the English Church, as his family had 
apparently expected. He was not in harmony with the 
church government of that day, and he already cherished 
the purpose of giving his life to the making of great poetry. 
So he retired to his father's country-house in Horton, and 
lived in quiet, reading classic and Italian authors, and 
writing. What he wrote here w^as already of the greatest 
poetic excellence. If his life had gone on as it began at 
Horton, he would have ranked among the sweetest of the 
lyric poets of England, with a strong resemblance to the 
singers of the previous generation, the beautiful minstrels 
of the age of Elizabeth. In these days of happiness "L'Al- 
legro," "II Penseroso," and " Comus " came into being; 
and the beautiful Latin poem to his father ; and final- 
ly, just as he was going on his Italian journey, he com- 
posed, as a memorial to a dead college friend, the great 
" Lycidas." 

11. After three years in the country at Horton, Milton 
spent fifteen months in Italy. He enjoyed, we may believe, 
one of the happiest periods of his life there. He visited 
Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, stayed two months 
(August and September) in Florence, where occurred his 
famous visit to the blind Galileo, " a prisoner to the In- 
quisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than as the 
Franciscan and Dominican licensers taught." He met in 
Florence many young Italian literary men, who became his 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

courteous admirers and friends. Prom Florence he went 
to Eome for two months more. From Eome he went to 
Naples, where he became the guest of the old Marquis of 
Villa, Manso. There is an allusion on page 17 of the essay 
to the beautiful Latin poem he wrote out of gratitude to 
the marquis. And then he was just going to Sicily and 
to Greece when the news from England came which, one 
may say, ended this early joyous chapter in his life, and 
cost English literature the poet of the " Comus," if it 
gave her the poet of "Paradise Lost/" and " Samson Ago- 
nistes." He turned back to his distracted native land to 
enter the great civil conflict already beginning there. On 
his way back to England he passed a few weeks again in 
Eome, and again two months in Florence. Then he went 
to Geneva by way of Venice, Verona, and Milan, staying a 
few days with his friends the Diodati family in Switzer- 
land. In August, 1639, he was at home again, living at 
first by himself as a quiet student. But he never wrote 
after this with the sweet tone of the matchless verses of 
his youth. "His piping took a troubled sound" in the 
uproar of conflict which was arising in England over the 
issues between king and parliament. 

12. It is going to be necessary, if we are intelligently to 
follow Macaulay's discussion of Milton's conduct, which 
occupies the whole latter half of this essay, to muster up all 
our information about the English history of the seven- 
teenth century, which our author treats as a matter of 
common knowledge. The best book, perhaps, for such a 
purpose would be Macaulay's own "History of England," 
reading at least the first two chapters. Macaulay's essay 
on Hallam's "Constitutional History" is as good. The 
great work upon this period, too large to read hastily, is to 
be seen in the stately volumes of Gardiner's "History of 
the Civil War." If that is inaccessible, one may read Gar- 
diner's contribution to the Epoch Series, " The Puritan 



INTR OB TJOTION xxiii 

Revolution." The two beautiful chapters of John Rich- 
ard Green's "Short History/' called "Puritan England/' 
and " The Revolution/' will help one exceedingly who has 
not much time to give to searching in larger books, and 
desires the most modern and impartial view. For Macau- 
lay, whatever he may be, is not impartial in judging of 
seventeenth-century history. 

Macaulay treats the whole question of Milton's conduct in 
this period of his life somewhat peculiarly. He does not 
discuss its details ; he takes up instead the "naked consti- 
tutional question/' whether that party which resisted and 
finally executed the king was legally and morally right. 
This question he does not decide on its merits, but by an 
appeal to the action of the Englishmen of the next genera- 
tion, who expelled from the throne James II. If this revo- 
lution of 1688 was justified (and no Englishman of modern 
days will deny that it was justified), then, to justify the 
party which drove Charles I. from the throne, Macaulay 
has but to show that Charles I. did the same things in 
1649 that James II. did in 1688. We may here consider 
for a moment the well-known story of the Great Rebellion 
in order to follow intelligently, as we have said, Macaulay's 
argument upon this topic. 

13. Charles I. entered upon his reign in 1625, inheriting 
a fatal legacy from his father, James I. The first two 
Stuarts held the doctrine of the "divine right of kings" 
in a peculiarly extravagant form. They believed, as Ma- 
caulay says in his history, that God "regarded hereditary 
monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with 
peculiar favour, that the rule of succession through eldest 
sons was a divine institution, that no human power could 
deprive the legitimate prince of his rights ; that the laws by 
which the prerogative was limited were merely concessions 
which the sovereign had freely made and might at his 
pleasure resume ; that any treaty into which a king might 



XX1Y INTRODUCTION 

enter with his people was merely a declaration of his pres- 
ent intentions and not a contract of which performance 
could be demanded." This theory,, says Macaulay, was 
never one of the "fundamental laws of England." On 
the contrary, it contradicted many facts of English his- 
tory. But it found many advocates among those who 
were at that time about the king, and, in particular, made 
rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church. 
On the other hand, it enraged and disgusted most Eng- 
lishmen, who, under the influence of the Protestant relig- 
ions of that century, were coming to have more and more 
respect for the new divine right of the people, and the 
right of private judgment. It was the baleful influence of 
this theory, that a king was a person so above the law that 
he could not make a binding contract with his people, 
which stained Charles's name with the reproach of tyranny 
and faithlessness. He was, though in other relations in 
life a high-minded gentleman, in the exercise of his office 
as monarch, as his people soon found, perfidious on princi- 
ple. When the parties divided over that question in the 
reign of Charles, the party of the Parliament stood up at 
first only for the privileges of the subject established by 
law ; while the party of the king supported only the royal 
"prerogative," that is, the general powers which a mon- 
arch possesses, not to be stated or denned by law. Both 
sides had something of right. The English king certainly 
had always had such general powers. He could, for exam- 
ple, convoke and dissolve Parliaments at such dates as he 
thought fit ; he commanded the armies of England ; he 
treated alone with foreign powers. Such irresponsible 
powers are always needed under any form of government 
and were known in England as the "prerogatives" of 
the sovereign. But the Parliament rightly maintained 
that there were limitations to the "prerogative" of very 
ancient date in England. First, they said, no English 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

king ought to legislate without the consent of Parliament ; 
secondly, the king could impose no taxes without the 
consent of Parliament ; thirdly, he was, after all, with all 
his prerogatives, bound to conduct his administration in 
accordance with the laws of the land, and if he broke these 
laws, his advisers and agents were responsible. These 
were the opinions of the young Milton, and of nearly all 
the Puritan side. But the king held opposite views ; and 
the difference soon appeared in practical politics. At his 
first entry into power Charles had quarrelled with his peo- 
ple over a question of foreign policy ; and the Parliament, 
to bring him down, refused supplies. Charles then at- 
tempted to raise money for the expenses of his govern- 
ment, without any taxes from Parliament, by forced loans, 
and by other devices, and tried to put down opposition by 
arbitrary imprisonments. In 1628 Parliament retorted by 
sending him the " Petition of Right." This document 
begged (1) prohibition of all forms of taxation, forced 
loans, "benevolences," and so on, without consent of Par- 
liament ; (2) that soldiers should not be billeted in private 
houses ; (3) that there should be no martial law in time of 
peace ; (4) that no one should be imprisoned except on a 
specified charge. Charles assented to these proposals, and 
received as a reward five subsidies from Parliament. But 
he very soon prorogued Parliament, and went on levying 
royal taxes without the people's consent. Parliament an- 
grily met again to resist the king. The speaker, acting 
under the king's orders, attempted to choke off debate, 
but the great Eliot offered his famous resolutions, which 
were passed while the speaker was held down in the chair. 
The king instantly dissolved the Parliament. For the 
eleven following years, from 1629 to 1640, while Milton 
was at college, reading in the country, and in Italy, 
Charles was governing without Parliament at all. By the 
exercise of his prerogative the king was raising money, 



XXVI INTRODUCTION 

making peace and war, introducing distasteful changes in 
religious discipline, and imprisoning and fining and put- 
ting in the pillory men who resisted anything he did. His 
advisers and helpers were leading him onward in this mis- 
taken course. In particular, Lord Strafford and Arch- 
bishop Laud are still remembered for these errors with 
sorrow and even abhorrence. By a " thorough " policy of 
repression and enforcement of conformity to the king's 
will, this party hoped to make the English monarchy just 
what the Stuart theory of divine right declared it should 
be, an unlimited despotism. Laud desired to bring the 
influence of an obedient church, "the handmaid of ar- 
bitrary authority," to the support of the Stuart throne. 
Strafford, going over to Ireland as lord deputy, tried to 
provide, by a ruthless military regime, troops and money 
to be used in coercing England. To check the rising tide 
of wrath among his subjects, the advisers of the king de- 
veloped tribunals, in the name of the "prerogative," to 
fine, imprison, and pillory such people as they considered 
dangerous to their policy. The best remembered of these 
at this day are the "High Commission," a royal commis- 
sion first created by Elizabeth to help her order ecclesiasti- 
cal matters, and the "Star Chamber," originally a com- 
mittee of Council called by the Tudor Kings (and even 
earlier) to treat of cases not determinable by common law. 
Then came the invention of "ship-money," and John 
Hampden's unsuccessful resistance at law. These were 
dark days for English liberty. 

14. Milton came home from Italy just as the Scotch 
Presbyterian uprising was forcing Strafford and Charles 
to abandon their policy of "thorough" repression and call 
Parliament together again. After a year or two of anxious 
watching, under the excitement of the acts of the Long Par- 
liament, Milton entered public life (as we should say) by 
publishing, in 1641, several pamphlets on the questions of 



INTRODUCTION xxvu 

the day. This was his first contribution to the Liberal 
side of the struggle. In days when there was of course no 
regular newspaper press, these tracts would have the effect 
in influencing public opinion which is attained in our time 
by the works of the great editors and writers of political 
journals. It was one of Milton's occupations to issue such 
tracts all through the war. He thus played the part in the 
Kebellion which would now be given to a great journalist 
in modern politics. He handled chiefly political subjects, 
but also some subjects not political. For instance, as he 
was maintaining himself in part by teaching, this interest 
induced him to write his famous tractate " On Education : 
to Mr. Samuel Hartlib," in June, 1644. But in all these 
years (1638-1649) his main interest was in politics and in 
the war. Except the sonnets written from time to time to 
commemorate an occasion of public interest, his poetical 
compositions almost ceased. He began his prose- writing, 
as we have said, in 1641 by publishing five pamphlets in a 
current controversy about "Church Government," advo- 
cating the abolition of the office of bishop in the Church 
of England. His next subject was divorce. In the years 
1643 and 1644 he printed four pamphlets to show that any 
marriages ought to be dissolved if husband and wife were 
not suitable mates for each other. This subject was doubt- 
less brought to his mind by the unlucky experiences of his 
own sudden marriage in 1643 with Mary Powell, a young 
girl of seventeen, daughter of a Eoyalist. But the matter 
took on a public and political importance. These pam- 
phlets on divorce brought Milton into a quarrel with his po- 
litical friends of the Presbyterian party. The Westminster 
Assembly, a body of divines called together by act of the 
Long Parliament to advise them upon the religious settle- 
ment of England, took offence at these very independent 
doctrines about marriage and tried to have Milton "in- 
vestigated" by a Parliamentary committee. This act of 



xxviii TNTR OD UCTION 

theirs separated liim forever from the Presbyterian party. 
It had the effect, moreover, of stimulating him to write in 
1644 his greatest pamphlet, " Areopagitica : a Speech of 
Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing : 
to the Parliament of England." Macaulay speaks on page 
84 of this great and beautiful work, which anticipates by 
more than a hundred years the modern principle of free- 
dom of the press as it was at last introduced and upheld in 
England and America. 

15. It will be seen by one who follows his writing care- 
fully, that as the fight with the king went on, Milton's 
eager spirit carried him on in the heat of his arguments to 
separate himself more and more from the moderate sup- 
porters of Parliament, consisting chiefly of the Presby- 
terians and the Scotch party, and to join with the Inde- 
pendents, whose centre was in the army of the military 
saints commanded by Cromwell. He wrote in their inter- 
est, after the execution of the king, his famous pamphlet 
" On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates : proving that 
it is lawfull and hath been held so in all ages for any who 
have the power to call to account a wicked king or tyrant, 
and after due conviction to depose and put him to death. 
The author J. M. 1649." This act identified him finally 
with the "regicides" and the party of Cromwell. He 
thought he saw the true principles of liberty there main- 
tained ; and here was a refuge for his own imaginative 
radicalism, which separated him from most parties in the 
nation. The king had proved, as even his friends ought 
to admit, an unfit governor of his country in that stormy 
time. The issues at stake in religion and policy were too 
difficult for him even to understand. But to Milton and 
to the Puritans, Charles Stuart was worse than a mistaken 
partisan; he was the very incarnation of evil. He had made 
himself guilty of all the innocent blood shed in the war. 
"The military saints of the army resolved," says Macaulay 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

in his history, " in defiance of the old laws of the realm, 
and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, that 
the king should expiate his crimes with his blood. A 
revolutionary tribunal was created ; that tribunal pro- 
nounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a pub- 
lic enemy, and his head was severed from his shoulders 
before thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting 
hall of his own palace." So Milton defended this act as a 
legitimate method of disposing of unsatisfactory " kings 
and magistrates." 

16. After the king's execution the government of Eng- 
land was decreed to be "by way of a republic." The ex- 
ecutive administration was nominally intrusted to a Council 
of State of forty-one members, though the army and 
Cromwell actually held supreme power. This council in 
1649 made John Milton its Secretary for Foreign Tongues. 
In 1653, when Cromwell dismissed the Rump and founded 
his Protectorate, according to the "Instrument of Govern- 
ment," a similar council was established, under which 
Milton held the same office. His duties in these offices 
were simply to write in his beautiful Latin (the best Latin 
in Europe of that day) such documents as the government 
desired to send to foreign powers, and to interpret such 
documents as came from abroad. In addition to these 
regular duties, he had a general oversight of any literary 
work needed by the commonwealth. Such literary tasks 
were immediately put into his hands. The regicide had to 
be apologized for and the king's propaganda to be met. 
The Royalists in 1649 were reading and circulating a book 
called " Eikon Basilike " (The King's Image), professing 
to be a legacy from the dead king, containing the thoughts 
and prayers of his last hours. Milton was employed to 
write a book to meet the dangerous popularity of this 
work. He wrote a tract called " Eikonoclastes : the Im- 
age Breaker," criticising and sneering in what one must 



xxx INTRODUCTION 

say is a rude, brawling tone at the pious sentiments of the 
king. The Council thought so well of this tract, as to 
employ Milton again, in 1653, on a similar task. The Roy- 
alists, desiring to bring the king's cause before the culti- 
vated and governing classes of Europe, had issued a Latin 
tract called Defensio regia. It was done for them in 
Holland by a famous Leyden professor, Claude Saumaise, 
" Salmasius," as he was known to the reading world. 
Milton answered it by a tract called Defensio pro populo 
Anglicano. This book of Milton's is chiefly interesting 
as an exhibition of the ferocious personalities which passed 
for controversy at that time. No cross-roads country 
editors ever abused each other as these great scholars of 
European dignity and reputation did. The main question 
in the Defensio about the king is almost lost under a 
flood of personalities about Salmasius. But the book cre- 
ated a great stir in the highest circles. Milton is said to 
have received the compliments of every embassy in Lon- 
don on account of the book. "The only inducement/' 
says Aubrey, of this period, "of severall foreigners that 
came over to England was chiefly to see 0. Protector and 
Mr. J. Milton." But the book has also the sad interest 
of costing the author his eyesight. Other pamphlets, 
including a second Defensio pro populo, which contains 
interesting portraits of some great commonwealth states- 
men, were dictated and published by him during his secre- 
taryship. There are also still in existence many public 
letters he wrote for the council and for Cromwell himself. 
In 1653 Milton's wife died, leaving him the three daugh- 
ters whose education was so curious and whose attitude to 
their father so very unfilial. In 1656 he married Cath- 
erine Woodcock. She died in 1657, and is buried in St. 
Margaret's, Westminster. To her he addressed the famous 
Sonnet XXIII. 

17. Another misfortune soon befell him. The death of 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

Cromwell, in 1658, changed the whole face of English poli- 
tics, and with this change began the last chapter of Milton's 
life. After several unlucky experiments it became plain 
to the English nation that they had now only the choice 
between the old Stuart monarchy again and government 
by the major-generals of the Model Army. The army 
settled the question by beginning to quarrel for the prize, 
whereupon the civilians of all parties drew together for 
protection. A " free Parliament/' supported by General 
Monk, brought back the Stuarts in 1660. In a last strug- 
gle for his convictions, Milton issued some English pam- 
phlets : some on the old subject of " Church Government " 
and one, in the very year of the Eestoration, called "A. 
Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth 
and the Excellence Thereof." But the day for these efforts 
had gone by. The king returned, and the secretary of the 
commonwealth and the defender of regicide was glad to 
vanish into poverty and private life. Why Milton was 
not punished among the other chiefs of the Cromwellian 
party is still very obscure ; but after remaining in hiding 
for a while he was restored to liberty. His circumstances 
were much reduced, however, and his circle of friends 
much diminished. He was a discreditable acquaintance, 
a " detestable republican," and almost an outlaw. Such 
people as came about him were chiefly young men of the 
more devout and persecuted sects. Independent Baptists 
or Quakers, like young Eliwood, Andrew Marvell, Cyriac 
Skinner, remained faithful ; Lady Eanelagh and others of 
his older friends and pupils visited him, and a Dr. Paget, 
a physician of that neighborhood, came to see him often. 
By Dr. Paget, Milton was recommended to marry as his 
third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who cherished and cared for 
him lovingly till his death. 

Under these circumstances of comparative isolation and 
defeat he went back to the other and earlier hopes and 



xxxil INTRODUCTION 

occupations of his life. He began to write poetry ao-ain, 
and between 1662 and 1667, at an age when poetical com- 
position is for most poets over, he wrote "Paradise Lost." 
The publication of this great poem could not fail to make 
amends for his disgrace. It won its way slowly but surely, 
so that in the last years of his life he had many admirers 
and visitors (among others the court-poet, John Dryden), 
though he was probably still " more admired abroad than 
at home." It is of these last years we have the most dis- 
tinct accounts of his person and occupations. Prom one 
of them, the notes of the painter Richardson, Macaulay 
takes the description of him on page 87. In 1671 Milton 
published " Paradise Regained," and with it " Samson 
Agonistes," the poem which has a special interest for 
Milton's admirers, who trace in it a delicate reminiscence 
of great dramatic scenes in his own life. These were his 
last poetic works. He died in 1674, at the age of sixty- 
six, and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, near the 
chancel, after a long life nearly coextensive with that of 
the Stuart monarchy which he tried to overthrow. 

18. It is interesting to notice that in these last years of 
his life, when his friends were chiefly younger men and his 
active political life ceased, that Milton's thoughts went 
back to his early avocation as a school-teacher. He pub- 
lished at this time, from old manuscript material, a Latin 
grammar and a logic, and he left behind him some col- 
lections for a history and for a Latin lexicon. Among 
other such things he was preparing in his last days a 
book for the instruction of students, to contain a sum- 
mary of theology. Apparently the title he meant to give 
it was "Idea Theologies." It was to follow the scheme 
of the manuals in which he used to study divinity in col- 
lege, at least in the division of subjects and the titles of 
chapters. But the sole authority for its conclusions was 
to be directly derived from texts of the Bible quoted in ap- 



INT ROB UGTION xxxm 

propriate places. This book was left in the hands of one 
of his young friends, Mr. Daniel Skinner, unfinished. It 
is a book of curious interest, a sort of summary of the 
theology of " Paradise Lost " with every particle of poetry 
evaporated, like the juice out of a dried apple, and yet with 
poetic suggestion about passages in it. It is this book 
which Macaulay nominally reviews in the present essay. 

19. A few more remarks about the course of Stuart 
politics after Milton's death will perhaps help the reader 
in following the latter paragraphs of the essay. The Ees- 
toration days were not altogether easy times. England 
had taken up her Stuart monarchy in 1600, as a refuge 
from the worse trouble of anarchy, as a man returns, 
for necessary protection against bad weather, to an old 
garment once discarded. It did not protect her very well. 
There were, to be sure, no more sufferings from ostenta- 
tious tyranny on the part of King Charles, no rebellious 
Parliaments in arms against royal authority ; but for fifty 
years more there were continual movements of political 
parties for the overthrow of government. Protestants sus- 
pected Catholics, and passed severe penal laws against that 
religion. Tories suspected Whigs and procured severe 
laws against Protestant Dissenters. The side which got 
uppermost in politics condemned and executed its oppo- 
nents. Such a disturbance was the Papist Plot in 1078, 
whose story was probably a figment composed by a band of 
needy adventurers who made their living as witnesses. For 
some reason the government pretended to believe them, 
and many wholly innocent Catholics lost their lives as 
plotters against the king. In 1680 a bill to exclude James, 
the king's brother, from the throne because he had become 
a Catholic, passed the House of Commons. The king 
dissolved the Parliament and summoned a new one at Ox- 
ford, hoping that the memories of the civil war and the 
loyalty of that old university might affect the disposition 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

of the members. The conduct of this Parliament, called 
the " Oxford Parliament," however, was so stubborn and 
insolent as to create a reaction in the country in favor of 
the king. Charles dissolved this Parliament after a session 
of only a few days, and the reaction continued. By 1683 
the Tories had won the public confidence again. Some 
secret party schemes of certain great Whig nobles were dis- 
covered by the Tories, and at the same time there came out 
a plot cooked up by gome villainous hangers-on of the 
Whig party to assassinate the king and his brother near 
the " Eye-house," a farm on the way from London to New- 
market. By a malicious confusion of the two " plots," 
Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney were found guilty of 
treason and executed. But the death of Charles in 1685 
brought his Catholic brother to the throne of England. 
The Eoman danger from which English Protestantism 
had been safe since the execution of Mary Queen of Scots 
reappeared in startling form. All other issues were swal- 
lowed up in this. In three years James had so alarmed all 
parties by his tyrannical acts in connection with his efforts 
to re-establish the Catholic religion, that people of all 
parties joined in inviting the Prince of Orange to enter Eng- 
land with Dutch troops. Thus came about the revolution of 
1688, of which Macaulay says so much. Parliament laid 
before the Prince of Orange, who was a near heir to the 
crown himself, and whose wife was next heir after James 
and his children, a "Declaration of Eight." It contains 
once more an assertion of the principles for which the peo- 
ple of England had been fighting through the lifetime of 
Milton. Making or suspending laws without consent of 
Parliament is to cease; ecclesiastical commissions are not 
to be made into courts ; levying money without consent of 
Parliament is illegal ; elections of members of Parliament 
must be free ; and so on. William and Mary accepted the 
crown then offered them, and were proclaimed king and 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

queen on condition that they should abide by these princi- 
ples. Henceforth the Stuart theory of divine right could 
never be pleaded by any English monarch again. James 
Stuart and his son, with the adhesion of a smaller number 
of Englishmen in each generation, represented themselves 
as kings of England by inheritance till the direct line died 
out. But the actual monarchs of England have held their 
authority ever since 1688 not by the law of inheritance 
but by the consent of the people. The Stuart theory of 
divine right was dead. 

20. It would be ungrateful to Lord Macaulay not to wish 
to know anything more of his life than the reading of this 
essay involves. He went on writing for the Edinburgh 
Review a succession of brilliant papers. These were col- 
lected and published in 1843, rather against his wishes. 
He thought them of temporary interest only, and scarcely 
worthy of preservation in book-form. They have, how- 
ever, remained among the most popular books in the Eng- 
lish language ever since. About six thousand copies a 
year of them in various editions are sold in his native coun- 
try alone, and the demand for them is so steady as to be a 
sort of index from year to year of the country's prosperity. 
In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament, being helped to get 
a seat there by Lord Lansdowne, who did not know him, 
but was interested in him by reading his essay on Mill. 
The most famous of these essays on literary subjects are 
those on Addison, Milton, Bunyan, and Johnson. On his- 
torical subjects the best essays are on Hallam, Temple 
(thought the best of all by Morison), Pitt, Clive, and War- 
ren Hastings. There are famous passages also in the essay 
on Kanke's " History of the Popes/' and in that on Bacon. 

21. Macaulay remained in Parliament through the great 
contest for reform in Parliament in 1832. His speeches 
made about that time on the passage of the great Eeform 
Bill are very famous. In 1834 he received an honorable 



Xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

and lucrative appointment in India. He here lived till 
1838, doing excellent work for the government, and for 
himself reading enormously in the Greek and Latin clas- 
sics, as was the habit of his life. He then returned to Eng- 
land in 1839 and re-entered political life as member of 
Parliament for Edinburgh. He continued to write at in- 
tervals, bringing out, among the other things which every 
school-boy knows, the " Lays of Ancient Rome," in 1842. 
He now began also in the intervals of political life to write 
his great " History of England." The first volumes of 
this appeared in 1848, followed by two more in 1855. This 
work may be called the most popular book of the sort ever 
printed in English. The publishers were able, in March 
of 1856, to pay him in one single check £20,000, for his 
share of the profits of one English edition. The number 
of editions of this great book is now quite beyond compu- 
tation ; and its sale still often exceeds that of the most 
popular novel of a year. It made him one of the most 
famous historians in Europe. But the plan of the work 
was so great that even with all his wonderful industry it 
was never finished. It remains, like a broken statue, just 
as the author left it at his death, not half completed ac- 
cording to his design. 

22. Macaulay's political life was full of prosperity, 
checkered with less adversity than falls to the lot of most 
politicians. He lost his seat at Edinburgh, but was after- 
wards triumphantly re-elected. In 1839 he was a mem- 
ber of Lord Melbourne's government. In 1857 he was 
made Baron Macaulay of Kothley Temple. But the larger 
part of his interest lay always with his literary and histori- 
cal work, upon which he labored, till, in 1859, he died, not 
unprepared by gradually failing health for that event, 
though it came to him at the early age of fifty-nine. He 
was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the Poets' Corner, near 
the statue of Addison. His " Life and Letters" has been 



IN TROD UGTION xxxvii 

published by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan. It is one 
of the best biographies ever written, and is much to be 
commended to the general reader who desires to know more 
of a noble man. 

23. As to Macaulay's position in literature, the question 
may be said to be still undetermined. We wait for a thorough 
analysis of his work by the critics, and the critics wait for 
the final judgment of posterity. During his life he was 
esteemed even beyond measure by his countrymen. After 
his death came a sort of reaction against this popularity. 
The tide, however, seems to be setting again the other way. 
At any rate, no one has ever denied that his narrative 
power in history is unapproached. And, as Mr. Saints- 
bury says in his latest criticism of Macaulay, he is certainly 
a very great man of letters, and "an unsurpassed leader to 
reading." 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS AND 
STUDENTS 

u To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observa- 
tion, and insight into all seemly and generous affairs." — John Milton. 

I. The first object in the mind of the student of this 
book should be an intelligent reading of the essay on Mil- 
ton, so as to obtain first of all what might be called a sense 
of the general structure of the work, and then some suffi- 
cient acquaintance with the more interesting details of it. 
By most readers this general reading may conveniently be 
done, allowing for due attention to hard words which must 
be looked up or explained, and for reading of necessary 
foot-notes, in four lessons, as follows : Lesson first, para- 
graphs one to twenty-fiye ; lesson second, paragraphs twen- 
ty-five to forty-nine ; lesson third, paragraphs forty-nine to 
seventy-two ; lesson fourth, paragraphs seventy-two to the 
end. After finishing his first reading, the student may 
then go back to the Introduction and the Summary. If 
classwork in English is contemplated, the instructor may 
assist at these early processes of study by using the book 
from time to time as a text-book for question and answer. 
He may thus help the student to make sure that he is 
carrying away a sufficient idea of the subject-matter of the 
essay as a whole, as well as of the special topics handled in 
each section. An excellent exercise may be given to 
a class by requiring of the pupils a written summary in 
one or two sentences of the contents of each paragraph. 
Such summaries may be composed in class extempore or 
given from memory. Long summaries may likewise be 



SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xxxix 

asked of the contents of each lesson, and of larger divisions 
of the essay. 

II. But there is a second object, of even more importance 
than the acquisition of information about the contents of 
this essay on Milton. The value of any single bit of read- 
ing, or even the value of the whole group of books recom- 
mended for reading by the colleges, will be small if the 
work thus recommended does not bring suggestions to 
pupil and teacher of further reading of like books, and 
thus more and more stimulus, as the work proceeds, to the 
literary appetite of the young people who engage in it. 
To offer to teachers suggestions as to the best methods of 
encouraging this wider reading among their own pupils, 
and of keeping the whole matter of the English work in 
our schools as fresh and interesting as possible, would not 
be very useful or very proper in this place. But there are 
two or three things one may suggest which must certainly 
be considered by any teacher who uses Macaulay's books 
for school reading. 

III. First, the pupil must have time and space enough 
given him for his English reading. He must not be op- 
pressed with tasks in " reading" which cannot be accom- 
plished in the hours at his command, and, on the other 
hand, he must not be allowed to shirk this work merely 
because it is not to be recited. Younger children must be 
followed up in the matter ; their reading process itself 
must be watched and trained, if necessary. Children often 
make difficulties for themselves by misunderstanding the 
nature of such lessons, and attempting monstrous feats of 
memory-work, or else by reading without any perception of 
the sense. Time, opportunity, and some skill are needed 
for all work in English reading and writing, quite as much 
in the library as in the laboratory or studio. 

Second, there must be at hand sufficient apparatus for 
the young worker. He ought to have access to a library 



xl SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 

which will give him some freedom in reading and referring 
from one book to another. For example, in studying this 
essay the following books should be near : 

(1) On Milton.— Works: " Milton's Poetical Works," 3 
vols., edited by Masson (Macmillan) ; " Milton's Prose 
Works," 5 vols., Bonn's Standard Library (Macmillan) ; 
"Milton's Prose Works," Henry Morley (Carisbrooke Li- 
brary) ; " Milton's Areopagitica," Clarendon Press Series 
(Macmillan). Biography and Criticism: Mark Pattison's 
" Milton," English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan) ; 
Matthew Arnold's " A French Critic on Milton," in his 
" Mixed Essays " (Macmillan) ; Lowell's " Milton," in 
" Among my Books " {Houghton, Mifflin, and Co.). 

(2) On Macaulay, — Works: "Essays," and "History 
of England" (Longmans, Green, and Co., Houghton, 
Mifflin, and Co., and Tauchnitz) ; "Lays of Ancient 
Rome," edited by Rolfe (Harper). Biography and Criti- 
cism : Trevelyan's " Macaulay's Life and Letters" (Long- 
mans) ; Morison's "Macaulay," English Men of Letters 
Series (Macmillan) ; Morley's " Macaulay," in his " Col- 
lected Works" (Macmillan) ; Walter Bagehot's "Macau- 
lay," in his " Miscellanies," Vol. I. (Longmans) ; Leslie 
Stephen's " Macaulay," in his " Hours in a Library," Third 
Series (Macmillan) ; "Macaulay," in George Saintsbury's 
"Corrected Impressions" (Heinemann) ; "Macaulay's 
Place in English Literature," by Frederic Harrison, Fo- 
rum, September, 1894. 

(3) General Works. — Historical: J. R. Green's "Short 
History of the English People;" S. R. Gardiner's "His- 
tory of the Civil War" (Longmans) ; Lord Claren- 
don's " History of the Civil War," Selections by G. D. 
Boyle (Macmillan) ; Carlyle's " Cromwell's Letters and 
Speeches" (Houghton) ; Gardiner's " Puritan Revolution," 
Hale's " Fall of the Stuarts," McCarthy's " Period of Re- 
form," Epochs of History Series (Longmans). General 



SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xli 

Literature : " Divine Comedy," translated by C. E. Nor- 
ton, 3 vols. (Houghton) ; Temple Shakespeare (Macmil- 
lan) ; Homer's " Odyssey/' translated by Palmer (Hough- 
ton) ; Browning's" Belaustion's Adventure " and "Aris- 
tophanes' Apology" (Houghton). The list may be ex- 
tended much further in this direction. 

(4) General Reference Boohs. — An encyclopaedia, prefer- 
ably the " Encyclopaedia Britannica ;" the " Century Dic- 
tionary," especially the supplementary volume on names of 
persons and places; the "Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy" of Stephen and Lee, a great but costly possession 
among such books ; Ward's " English Poets" (Macmillan) ; 
Ploetz, " Epitome of Universal History," edited by Til- 
linghast ; any good atlas, say, " Longmans' School Atlas," 
or Bartholomew's " Pocket Atlas." 

Third, the pupil must be taught to work, and yet he 
must not be directed and controlled too much. It would 
no doubt be better if much of this English work could be 
left to the private life and the home influences of the pupil. 
It is a very important thing for a man or woman to know 
in early youth the satisfaction of planning and carrying on 
for oneself lines of study and reading suggested but not 
prescribed by one's regular public work. Even at school, 
still more at college and in after life, no one can succeed 
who cannot originate and carry out work for himself with- 
out the direction of any one. " No one ever rose above 
mediocrity, through the teaching of any one except him- 
self." And then English literature is of all subjects most 
injured by the air of the schoolroom. Who does not know 
the difference between the books one discovers, for him- 
self in the benevolent atmosphere of home, or at the sug- 
gestion of sympathetic comrades, or, best of all, in some 
astonished moment, in the loneliness of a library, when 
some " new planet swims into his ken," as he has acciden- 
tally opened one of the world's great books, and the very 



xlii SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 

same books when one lias seen them vivisected in a class- 
room by ever so clever and ever so intelligent a pedagogue ? 

But teachers of the present day have taken possession of 
so much of children's time, and parents of the present day 
have kept control of so little, that a school now has duties 
to the general reading of children which may not be easily 
escaped. One duty a school can perform may be described 
as the encouraging of thoughtful reading in English, put- 
ting information from various sources together, and " get- 
ting ideas " out of books. 

IV. No author will help a young mind, who is just be- 
ginning to care for the study of the human story, to come 
to the power of observing and reflecting upon books and 
men, and to the neat recording of his impressions, better 
than Macaulay. The clever proverbial "school-boy," who 
knew so many things, is a good type of the person whom 
Macaulay's work addresses in this regard most powerfully. 
For instance, let any pupil who reads this essay select 
some paragraphs which interest him. It may be that he 
will choose the paragraphs about Dante. Let him then 
take the phrases of the essay referring to Dante and look 
up the allusions in his reference-books. Let him perhaps 
make some written expanded accounts in place of the short 
notes he finds in print at the foot of these pages. Let him 
make new and additional notes. Let him add historical 
facts about Dante, Farinata, Beatrice, or little criticisms 
of his own upon the " Divine Comedy." This may lead 
in the end to much additional reading and information ; 
at any rate most wholesome habits are forming of turn- 
ing things over in one's mind and combining one^s new 
ideas with one's old intellectual possessions. Any school- 
boy who follows out in this fashion the lines of thought 
and reading suggested in a very few of Macaulay's essays, 
will find the circle of his acquaintance with history and 
literature, " the best that men have thought in the 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xliii 

world/' is widening very fast and in a very interesting 
fashion. 

V. Khetorical analysis and criticism of Macaulay's work 
will be tempting. The teacher must be guided in this by 
his sense of what is due to the immaturity of his scholars, 
by the time at their command, and by the relations of the 
parts of their schoolwork to each other. Younger pupils 
may be drilled on the vocabulary of Macaulay, which is 
carefully chosen and accurately used. Older pupils will 
profit by a study of his skill in building paragraphs. The 
paragraph as a unit in meaning and in structure school- 
children seldom perceive in their reading, and as a conse- 
quence the paragraphing of children's letters and their 
school compositions is awkward and naive. Macaulay can 
show any young writer what a paragraph is as few English 
writers can. As to the individual tricks of his style, 
his antitheses, his long and short alternating sentences, 
his climaxes, and his " stamping emphases/' these things 
will be even too interesting to young readers, and a little 
notice of them is quite enough. 

The following questions and topics are suggested for 
oral examinations, for rhetorical study, and for themes 
and compositions. 

Oral Examination on the Essay. — Numerous ques- 
tions should be asked in the class-room on parts of the 
essay previously assigned for the day's reading. Each 
teacher will naturally • prefer to invent such questions for 
himself as the pupil seems to need, but the following speci- 
mens may make clearer the sort of work possible. For in- 
stance, on the first paragraph, the teacher may ask : 1. 
What was the date of the essay ? In what journal did it 
first appear ? What do you know of that Review ? 2. 
What was the occasion of the composition of this essay ? 
Title of the work discussed ? 3. How many paragraphs are 
given by Macaulay to this review ? Is this review favor- 



xliv SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 

able to the work of Milton, or not ? Give in a few words 
an account of the contents of these paragraphs. 4. "What 
happened to this book after Milton's death ? 5. What 
does Macaulay mean by the " Popish Trials ? " 6. What 
was the " Eye-house Plot ? " etc., etc. Numbers of such 
questions will occur to anyone. 

Study of Rhetoric. — There will be an advantage in treat- 
ing a certain number of rhetorical topics in connection 
with Macaulay's English style. It may be studied by the 
pupils and results reported to the teacher, orally or in writ- 
ing. Genung's " Rhetoric, " or Adams Hill's "Principles 
of Rhetoric/' will be of service in this pursuit. Subjects 
like these are suggested for study : 1. The "Period 7 ' and 
the " Loose Sentence/' For typical Loose Sentences, see § 3, 
" It is, like all his Latin works," etc. ; § 7, " The dexter- 
ous Capuchins," etc. ; §14, "Perhaps no person," etc. ; 
§20, " The public has long been," etc. ; §47, " They are 
simple," etc. ; § 52, " He was not, in name and profession," 
etc. ; and elsewhere. For Periods, see almost any para- 
graph ; fine specimens are found in §16, "As the light of 
knowledge," etc. ; §39, "The peculiar art," etc. ; §45, 
" Such as it was," etc. ; § 46, " Hence it was," etc. ; § 93, 
" Nor do we envy," etc. 2. Climaxes. See § 7, " by ex- 
hibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment," etc. ; 
§ 7, " John Milton, the poet," etc. ; § 38, " walking among 
men," etc. ; § 45, " Of the great men," etc. ; § 52, " all its 
worst vices," etc.; § 81," For his sake empires had risen," to 
the end ; and in many other places. 3. Iterations of the same 
idea in many forms. Studied variety of wording. Examples 
of this characteristic are too numerous to quote. See § 9, 
entire ; § 21, especially the second sentence ; § 53, entire ; 
§ 60, entire, noting especially the careful variation of the 
verbs. Compare with this § 23 entire. 4. Repeated illustra- 
tions of a statement doing duty for proofs of its truth. See 
in 813 the illustrations of the statement that the "office 



SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xlv 

of the poet is to portray, not to dissect ; " or in § 15, the 
expansion, by illustration, of the statement that, " in a 
rude state of society we may expect to find the poetical 
temperament in its highest perfection/' See also § 26, 
"Euripides attempted to carry the reform further/' etc. ; 
§21, " He does not paint/' etc. It will be a useful exer- 
cise for the pupils^ to determine in other places whether 
Macaulay is really adducing proofs or only making clear 
by illustration, or restating in various ways a proposition 
which needs proof s. 5. Parallel construction. See § 3, the 
sentences beginning, " The book itself/' " It is," " There 
's no imitation/' " The author," " He," etc. Notice the 
slight variations in the subject of each sentence. See also 
§ 17, "He who" to " modern ruin." Notice here that the 
same subject is maintained from sentence to sentence. See 
§59, "Were they," etc. ; §61, "We charge," etc. ; §79, 
"The Puritans," etc. Other instances of this mannerism 
of Macaulay's will be easily found. 6. "Particularity." 
See for a description in Macaulay's own words of the lit- 
erary effects produced by " particularity," § 12. For ex- 
amples see in § 6 the phrase, "dust and silence of the 
upper shelf," used to convey the general idea of forgotten 
obscurity; or §83, " Dunstans, De Montforts," etc., in- 
stead of some general phrases like "intolerant ecclesias- 
tics, cruel persecutors," etc. Examples may be found in 
many paragraphs. Compare also the effects of the figures 
of speech which follow. 7. Metonymy. See §42, "Hin- 
dostan bows down to her idols ; " § 49, " roused Greece 
from slavery ; " § 86, " tasted the cup of Circe ; " and 
others. 8. Metaphors. See § 20, " innumerable reapers ; 
§ 49," Oromasdes and Arimanes ; " § 49, " kindled a fire ; " 
§ 89, "He never came up in the rear," etc. ; § 89, "the 
torch of truth." Metaphors are used in every paragraph 
in profusion. 9. Similes and comparisons. These are also 
too numerous to mention particularly. See for examples, 



xliv SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 

able to the work of Milton, or not ? Give in a few words 
an account of the contents of these paragraphs. 4. What 
happened to this book after Milton's death ? 5. What 
does Maeaulay mean by the " Popish Trials ? " 6. What 
was the " Eye-house Plot ? " etc., etc. Numbers of such 
questions will occur to anyone. 

Study of Rhetoric. — There will be an advantage in treat- 
ing a certain number of rhetorical topics in connection 
with Macaulay's English style. It may be studied by the 
pupils and results reported to the teacher, orally or in writ- 
ing. Genung's " Khetoric, " or Adams Hill's "Principles 
of Rhetoric/' will be of service in this pursuit. Subjects 
like these are suggested for study : 1. The "Period" and 
the " Loose Sentence." For typical Loose Sentences, see § 3, 
" It is, like all his Latin works," etc. ; § 7, " The dexter- 
ous Capuchins," etc. ; §14, "Perhaps no person," etc. ; 
§ 20, " The public has long been," etc. ; § 47, " They are 
simple," etc. ; § 52, " He was not, in name and profession," 
etc. ; and elsewhere. For Periods, see almost any para- 
graph ; fine specimens are found in §16, "As the light of 
knowledge," etc.; §39, "The peculiar art," etc. ; §45, 
" Such as it was," etc. ; § 46, " Hence it was," etc. ; § 93, 
" Nor do we envy," etc. 2. Climaxes. See § 7, " by ex- 
hibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment," etc. ; 
§ 7, " John Milton, the poet," etc. ; § 38, " walking among 
men," etc. ; § 45, "Of the great men," etc. ; § 52, " all its 
worst vices," etc.; § 81," For his sake empires had risen," to 
the end ; and in many other places. 3. Iterations of the same 
idea in many forms. Studied variety of wording. Examples 
of this characteristic are too numerous to quote. See § 9, 
entire ; § 21, especially the second sentence ; § 53, entire ; 
§ 60, entire, noting especially the careful variation of the 
verbs. Compare with this § 23 entire. 4. Repeated illustra- 
tions of a statement doing duty for proofs of its truth. See 
in §13 the illustrations of the statement that the "office 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlv 

of the poet is to portray, not to dissect ; " or in § 15, the 
expansion, by illustration, of the statement that, "in a 
rude state of society we may expect to find the poetical 
temperament in its highest perfection." See also § 26, 
"Euripides attempted to carry the reform further," etc. ; 
§21, "He does not paint/' etc. It will be a useful exer- 
cise for the pupils^ to determine in other places whether 
Macaulay is really adducing proofs or only making clear 
by illustration, or restating in various ways a proposition 
which needs proofs. 5. Parallel construction. See § 3, the 
sentences beginning, " The book itself," " It is," " There 
's no imitation," " The author," " He," etc. Notice the 
slight variations in the subject of each sentence. See also 
§ 17, "He who" to " modern ruin." Notice here that the 
same subject is maintained from sentence to sentence. See 
§ 59, " Were they," etc. ; § 61, " We charge," etc. ; § 79, 
" The Puritans," etc. Other instances of this mannerism 
of Macaulay's will be easily found. 6. "Particularity." 
See for a description in Macaulay's own words of the lit- 
erary effects produced by " particularity," § 12. For ex- 
amples see in § 6 the phrase, "dust and silence of the 
upper shelf," used to convey the general idea of forgotten 
obscurity; or §83, " Dunstans, De Montforts," etc., in- 
stead of some general phrases like " intolerant ecclesias- 
tics, cruel persecutors," etc. Examples may be found in 
many paragraphs. Compare also the effects of the figures 
of speech which follow. 7. Metonymy. See §42, "Hin- 
dostan bows down to her idols ; " § 49, " roused Greece 
from slavery;" §86, "tasted the cup of Circe;" and 
others. 8. Metaphors. See § 20, " innumerable reapers ; 
§ 49," Oromasdes and Arimanes ; " § 49, " kindled a fire ; " 
§ 89, "He never came up in the rear," etc. ; § 89, "the 
torch of truth." Metaphors are used in every paragraph 
in profusion. 9. Similes and comparisons. These are also 
too numerous to mention particularly. See for examples, 



xlvi SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 

§ 12, " language, the machine of the poet ;" § 16, " as a 
magic lantern ; " § 19, " as the flower-pots of a hot-house ; " 
§ 22, " as Cassim ; " § 24, " as atar of roses;" § 85, " like 
the Eed-Cross Knights," etc., etc. 10. Antithesis and pun- 
gent contrasts ; Balanced expression. This is the most 
marked characteristic of Macaulay's writing. See for 
specimens, §8, " extol the poems, dec^y the poet;" §15, 
entire ; § 28, " He could stoop," to end ; § 37, entire ; 
§ 60, entire ; §§ 74, 75, entire ; § 79, entire. The pupil 
may make his own selections to illustrate this mannerism 
of Macaulay. 11. Epigram and Paradox; Exaggerated 
statement. See § 10, " As civilization advances, poetry 
declines ;" § 14, " Truth is essential to poetry ; but it is 
the truth of madness ; " §46, entire ; § 82, " The inten- 
sity of their feelings," etc. ; 12. Biblical cadences and 
phraseology. See §45, "Neither blindness," etc. ; and in 
many other places, which the pupil may himself discover. 
13. Artistic alternations of long and short sentences. See §§ 
18, 43, 44, 59, 64, 84. 14. Artistic inversions and interroga- 
tions. §19, "Never before," etc.; §22, "No sooner," 
etc. ; § 49, " Then were first proclaimed," etc. ; §§ 57, 58, 
59, for the interrogative form. 

Many other rhetorical topics will occur to the student 
of the essay who examines it from this point of view. 

Topics for compositions. — These may easily be drawn 
from the essay. Summaries may be asked, as described 
above ; any of the foot-notes may be verified or expanded 
by the use of books of reference ; or, for longer exercises, 
topics like some of the following may be given : 1. Char- 
acter of the work reviewed in this essay, and its relations 
to Milton's life. 2. Macaulay's and Johnson's estimate of 
Milton. Which is more rational ? 3. " As civilization 
advances, poetry declines." Does your knowledge of the 
classics and English literature lead you to believe this ? 
Why are there no great poets to-day ? 4. Compare the 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlvii 

"Lays of Ancient Home" and " Chevy Chace." 5. De- 
scribe the pictures roused in your imagination * by these 
lines from " II Penseroso : " 

" Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 
Or call up him that left half -told 
The story of Cambuscan bold, 
Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
And who had Canace to wife, 
That owned the virtuous ring and glass, 
And of the wondrous horse of brass 
On which the Tartar king did ride ; 
And if aught else great bards beside 
In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 
Of forests, and enchantments drear, 
Where more is meant than meets the ear." 

Or these, from the same poem : 

" I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
Over some wide-watered shore, 
Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 
Or, if the air will not permit, 
Some still removed place will fit, 
Where glowing embers through the room 
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; 
Far from all resort of mirth, 
Save the cricket on the hearth, 
Or the bellman's drowsy charm 
To bless the doors from nightly harm. 
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 
Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, 
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere 

* For the " magic" power of words on the imagination, to which 
Macaulay refers, see also Arnold's Essay on Celtic Literature. 



xlviii SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS 

The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
What worlds or what vast regions hold 
The immortal mind that hath forsook 
Her mansion in this fleshly nook." 

Or these, from "Lycidas : " 

" Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding- seas 
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled ; 
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
Sleep 1 st by the fable of Bellerus old, 
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 
Looks toward Numancos and Bayona's hold : 
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth ; 
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new-^pangled ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 

Or these, from " Paradise Lost : " 

" Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 
His legions — angel forms, who lay entranced 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades, 
High over -arched embower ; or scattered sedge 
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves overthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
From the safe shore their floating carcases 
And broken chariot- wheels. So thick bestrown, 
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 
Under amazement of their hideous change." 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlix 

6. How is Milton's poetry affected by his admiration of 
the Greek Drama ? 7. Description of the plot and persons 
of "Samson Agonistes." 8. The " Masque of Comus." 

9. Outline the interview between Dante and Farinata. 

10. Between Dante and Beatrice. 11. Test the accuracy 
of Macaulay's comparison of Milton and Dante, by compar- 
ing for yourself Lucifer in the last canto of the " Inferno/' 
and Satan in the first book of " Paradise Lost." 12. Ac- 
count for the effect of reality produced by Swift's narra- 
tive of " Gulliver's Travels/' and Defoe's " Journal of the 
Plague Year." 13. Sketch Milton's life. 14. Sketch 
Dante's life (see Lowell's " Essay on Dante"). 14. De- 
scribe a portrait of Dante. 15. The Sonnets alluded to in 
§ 47 ; describe the occasion of each, and criticise them. In 
what particulars do they resemble collects ? Prove the 
truth of your statements by quotations. 16. " Oromasdes 
and Arimanes : " find similar uses of this metaphor in Mac- 
aulay's "Essay on Lord Byron," and again in his "Essay 
on Hallam ; " explain in full. 17. The Principles of the 
Revolution of 1688. 18. Had Charles I. broken the fun- 
damental laws of England ? 19. Archbishop Laud. 20. 
" Strafford/' by Robert Browning. 21. The Long Parlia- 
ment. 22. Oliver Cromwell. 23. The Independents. 
24. The freedom of the press is indispensable to political 
freedom. 25. The prose of Milton ; how does it compare 
oratorically with Macaulay's prose ? 26. A general criti- 
cism of Macaulay's essay on Milton. 27. A sketch of the 
life of Macauiay. 28. The reform of Parliament in 1832. 
29. Macaulay's " History of England." 30. The changes 
of ministry in England from 1830 to 1859. 31. The part 
played by Zachary Macauiay in the abolition of slavery in 
England. 32. Macaulay's ways with children (see Trevel- 
yam, Chapter XL). 33. Macaulay's relations to his sisters 
(see Trevelyan, especially chapters III. and VI.). 



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ESSAY ON MILTON 

(Edinburgh Revieio, August, 1825. ) 

Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana Ubri duo 
posthumi. 1 A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, com- 
piled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By Johk 
Milton", translated from the original by Charles E. 
Sumner, M.A., etc., etc. 1825. 2 

1. Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, 3 
deputy keeper of the state papers, in the course of his re- 
searches among the presses 4 of his office, met with a large 
Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of 
the foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the 

§§ 1-8. Prefatory Remarks. Description of a theological work 
by John Milton, lately discovered. 

1 Literally, Two Posthumous Books of John Milton, Englishman, 
on Christian Doctrine. Milton's title originally intended for it was 
probably Idea Theologies or "A Body of Divinity. " 

2 Published in two editions Latin and English, by Dr. Sumner. 
Both are now rare books The English version, re-edited by J. A. 
St. John, is to be found in Bonn's Standard Library, Milton's Prose 
Works, Vols. IV. , V. 

3 Robert Lemon, F.S.A., noted for other discoveries among the 
state papers. See Appendix to Scott's Rob Roy. Until the beginning 
of this century the English state papers were much neglected and 
carelessly kept. Since Mr. Lemon's time, however, they have been 
carefully studied and calendared. All such records are now kept in 
the Record-Office under the special charge of the Master of the Rolls 
through the deputy-keeper of the Records. For some adventures of 
the English state papers, see Stories from the State -Paper Office, A. C. 
Ewald (Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1882). 

4 Repositories for documents. 



2 ESSAY ON MILTON 

office of Secretary/ and several papers relating to the Popish 
Trials 2 and the Eye-house Plot. 3 The whole was wrapped 
up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. 
On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the 
long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, ac- 
cording to Wood and Toland, 4 Milton finished after the 
Eestoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, 
it is well known, held the same political opinions with. his 
illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions 
of the government during that persecution of the Whigs 
which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, 5 
and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, 
this work may have been brought to the office in which it 
has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is 
a genuine relic of the great poet. 6 

1 See Introduction, 16. 

2 Arising from the bogus Popish Plot invented by Dr. Titus Oates, 
1678. Among other extraordinary lies Dr. Oates testified that " the 
late John Milton" had been a member of a treasonable Papist Club in 
London ! 

3 The Whig conspiracy to assassinate Charles II. in 1683. See In- 
troduction, 19. 

4 Anthony a Wood (1632-1695), in his History of Oxford University 
{Atlienm Oxonienses, 1691), gives a life of Milton, who took the Mas- 
ter's degree there in 1635. This life is based largely upon notes fur- 
nished by one Aubrey, a contemporary of Milton, who knew some of 
his family and friends very well and drew from them much informa- 
tion. John Toland (1670-1722), the Deist, wrote an early Life of Mil- 
ton, published in 1698. 

5 A Parliament summoned to Oxford by Charles II. in 1681. See 
Introduction, 19. 

6 The adventures of this manuscript are now better known than 
when this paragraph was written. After the publication of Macau- 
lay's Essay, more documents were found by Mr. Lemon and others, 
showing that Mr. Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriac, had been em- 
ployed under Milton's own direction in preparing this manuscript for 



ESSAY OJST MILTON 3 

2. Mr. Sumner, 1 who was commanded by His Majesty 
to edite and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of 
his task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his 
character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant 2 ; 
but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His 
notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare 
merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently 
the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own 
religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. 

3. The book itself will not add much to the fame of 
Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written— 
though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Ox- 
ford and Cambridge. 3 There is no elaborate imitation of 

publication. It was to be published after Milton's death, which oc- 
curred in 1674 during the preparation of the book for the press. In 
1675, accordingly, Mr. Skinner tried to get it printed, along with 
certain public letters written by Milton as Secretary of the Common- 
wealth, at the press of Elzevir in Amsterdam. The printer, Daniel 
Elzevir, looked over the manuscript, and was so alarmed by its con- 
tents that he notified the English government, saying that "there 
were many things in it which ought to be suppressed. " The govern- 
ment thereupon obliged the Skinners to give the manuscript up. It 
was then thrown aside among other old papers until it was found one 
hundred and fifty years afterwards, as described above. 

1 Afterwards Lord Bishop of Winchester ; at this time Royal Chaplain 
and Librarian. " His Majesty " is George the Fourth. 

2 Notice Macaulay's careful use throughout the essay of this word, 
which is often abused in common speech. 

3 Oxford and Cambridge, the two great English universities, have 
maintained in England a high standard in Latin style by encouraging- 
prize compositions in prose and verse. Although Macaulay was him- 
self an excellent classical scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, we 
learn from his biography that Latin composition was never a very 
attractive exercise to him. "I never practised composition," he says 
in a letter, u a single hour since I have been at Cambridge." He is 
therefore a little scornful here about these prize essays ; in fact, as 
we learn from his nephew, other men of his time wrote better Latin 
than he did. 



4 ESSAY ON MILTON 

classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the 
ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of 
our academical Pharisees. 1 The author does not attempt 
to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian 2 
gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense 
and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his 
subject compelled him to use many words 

" That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 3 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
were his mother-tongue ; and where he is least happy, his 
failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, 
not from the ignorance of a foreigner. What Denham, 4 
with great felicity, says of Cowley, 5 may be applied to 

1 The Pharisees were a sect of the Jews noted for their overzealous 
care about outward forms of religion, to the neglect of inward virtue 
of heart and soul. See Gospel of St. Matthew, Chap, xxiii. Even so 
the Latin essays of the English universities were beautiful outwardly 
but had no valuable contents. 

42 Like Cicero, the great Roman orator (100-43 B.C.). whose name 
is a proverb for the best Latin prose ever composed. 

3 E.g., praedestinatio, electio nationalis, reprobatio, etc. This line 
is from Milton's Sonnet XL Quintilian (35-96 a.d.) was a famous 
Roman teacher of Rhetoric. In his work upon The Education of the 
Orator he discusses many points of interest in Latin diction and style. 
His own taste was very careful and his admiration of Cicero's Latin 
was great. 

4 Sir John Denham (see Ward's English Poets), a poet and courtier 
of the reign of Charles I. In some lines on the Death and Burial of 
Mr. Abraham Cowley among the ancient Poets, he says : — 

'* Horace's wit and Virgil's state 
He did not steal but emulate ; 
And when he would like them appear, 
Their garb but not their clothes did wear." 

5 Abraham Cowley, the most popular poet of Milton's day ; one of 
the great men of Macaulav's own college (Trinity College, Cambridge). 
He wrote many translations and imitations of classic authors, as well 



ESSAY ON MILTON 5 

him. He wears the garb but not the clothes of the an- 
cients. 1 

4. Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a 
powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the 
influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. 
He professes to form his system from the Bible alone ; and 
his digest 2 of scriptural texts is certainly among the best 
that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his 
inferences as in his citations. 

5. Some of the heterodox 3 opinions which he avows seem 
to have excited considerable amazement ; particularly his 
Arianism/ and his notions on the subject of polygamy. 5 
Yet we can scarcely conceive 4^at any person could have 
read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the 
former ; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with 
the history of his life, ought to be much startled at the 
latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting 

as English, odes and prose essays. In politics he took the royalist 
side with Lord Falkland. Macaulay wrote a charming Conversation 
between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton for KnighVs 
Quarterly in 1823, which anticipates some of the paragraphs in this 
present essay, and might well be read in connection with it. 

1 I.e., his ideas are clothed in the general form which the ancients 
would have used ; but not in exactly the same words and phrases. 

2 Digest, a collection and abridgment of literary or scientific matter 
arranged in some convenient order. 

3 Heterodox, heretical, theologically incorrect. 

4 The theological tenets, upon the nature of Christ, of Arius, an 
Alexandrian priest of the fourth century. After a fierce battle in the 
church, these opinions were condemned as heresy by the General 
Council of Nicsea, 325 a.d. Milton, like Sir Isaac Newton, appears to V* 
be a semi-Arian, believing that Christ possessed a certain derivative 
deity, not, however, coeternal with the Father's. p 

5 Milton maintains in his essay that, according to the Old Testament, 
marriage under polygamy was a genuine marriage. Polygamy, there- 
fore, though it may be inexpedient, is not a crime like murder and 
stealing. 



6 ESSAY ON MILTON 

the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter/ and the 
observation of the Sabbath, 2 might, we think, have caused 
more just surprise. 

6. But we will not go into the discussion of these points. 
The book, were it far more orthodox, or far more heretical 
than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present 
generation. The men of our time are not to be converted 3 
or perverted by quartos. 4 A few more days, and this es^ay 
will follow the Defensio Populi 5 to the dust and silence 
of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the re- 
markable circumstances attending its publication, will 
secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or 
two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- 
room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and it will 
then, to borrow the elegant language of the play -bills, be 
withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. 

7. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, 
transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The 
dexterous Capuchins 6 never choose to preach on the life 

1 " Matter is imperishable and eternal, because it is not only from 
God, but out of God," who is eternal. Milton would be classed now 
as a pantheistic materialist. He appears to hold that there is no radi- 
cal distinction between body and soul, or between matter and spirit. 

2 "The command to keep the Sabbath was given to the Israelites 
for a variety of reasons, mostly peculiar to themselves;" "the law 
of the Sabbath having been repealed, it is evident that no day of 
worship has been appointed in its place," etc., etc. Milton is an Anti- 
Sabbatarian. 

3 Convert, to turn from one opinion to another ; pervert, to turn 
from a true opinion to a false one. 

4 Books in the making of which the large sheets of printing paper 
are folded twice, making four leaves. The book Macaulay is review- 
ing was a quarto. This shape was a favorite form for important 
books in Milton's day. It is now little used except for books contain- 
ing plates and maps like school geographies. 

5 See Introduction, 16. 

6 A younger branch of the Franciscan monks, named from the pecul- 



ESSAY ON MILTON 7 

and miracles of a saint, till they have awakened the devo- 
tional feelings of their auditors, by exhibiting some relic 
of him — a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a 
drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to 
take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, 
while this memorial of a great and good man is still in 
the hands of all, to say something of his moral and in- 
tellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the se- 
verest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the 
present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the 
day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius 
and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, 
the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the cham- 
pion and the martyr of English liberty. 1 

8. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it 
is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the gen- 
eral suffrage of the civilised world, his place has been as- 
signed among the greatest masters of the art. His 
detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been 
silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, 
who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to 
decry the poet. The works, they acknowledge, considered 
in themselves, may be classed among the noblest produc- 
tions of the human mind. But they will not allow the 

iar cowl or capuce they wear. They are famous as preachers, as mis- 
sionaries, and as martyrs. 

§§ 8-49. First Division of the Essay : Milton's Poetry. 
§§ 8-18. First topic discussed: Is Milton's place among the greatest 
masters f Yes, for Tie triumphed over the difficulty of writing poetry in 
the midst of a highly civilised society. A discussion of the relation of 
poetry to civilisation. 

1 This sentence describes accurately the general subject of the essay. 
The essay is not a complete analysis of Milton's literary product, nor 
an elaborate biographical study. It is just a Commemoration of the gen- 
ius and virtues of John Milton, with a general discussion of some of his 
moral and intellectual qualities. 



8 ESSAY ON MILTON 

author to rank with those great men who, born in the in- 
fancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the 
want of instruction, and, though destitute of models 
themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy im- 
itation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors 
created ; he lived in an enlightened age ; he received a fin- 
ished education ; and we must therefore, if we would form 
a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions ior 
these advantages. 

9. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical 1 as 
the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to strug- 
gle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. 
He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not 
been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson 2 
has thought fit to make him the butt of his clumsy ridi- 
cule. The poet, Ave believe, understood the nature of his 
art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical gen- 
ius derived no advantage from the civilisation which sur- 
rounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; 
and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder 
age of simple words and vivid impressions. 

10. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry al- 
most necessarily declines. Therefore, though we admire 
those great works of imagination which have appeared in 
dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they 
have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold 

1 Paradox, an apparently absurd but true statement. 

2 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the dictator of literary opinion 
to the England of his time. The allusion is to his Life of Milton in 
his Lives of the Poets. On this subject Johnson says in this work 
that Milton was a " victim to the fumes of vain imagination'' in that 
he thought he depended on seasons and climates ; Johnson assures us 
that, however inferior to the heroes of better ages, c, he might still 
be great among his contemporaries " "a giant among pygmies.'' For 
the relations of Johnson's Life to Macaulay's Essay, see Introduction, 
4. 5, and 6. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 9 

that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a 
great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot under- 
stand why those who believe in that most orthodox l article 
of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the 
best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. 
Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon 2 indicates a cor- 
responding uniformity in the cause. 

11. The fact is, that common observers reason from the 
progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imita- 
tive arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and 
slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in 
separating and combining them. Even when a system has 
been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, 
or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast 
hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits it, 
augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In 
these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under 
great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are en- 
titled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellec- 
tual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. 
Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's 3 little dialogues 
on Political Economy, could teach Montague 4 or Wal- 

1 Orthodox, correct theologically ; lience, correct in general. 

2 Now usually spelled phenomenon ; u a thing appearing," something 
whose appearing requires explanation, 

3 Mrs. Marcet wrote a text-book for children called Conversations 
on Political Economy. The conversation is carried on by Mrs. B . , 
who expounds the principles of Adam Smith, Malthus, Say, and Sis- 
mondi, to Caroline, who asks the questions u which would be likely 
to arise in the mind of an intelligent young person." A letter of 
Maria Edge worth's, written from the house of Mr. Ricardo in 1822, 
says: "It is now high fashion with blue ladies to talk political 
economy and make a great jabbering on the subject, while others 
who have more sense, like Mrs. Marcet, hold their tongues and listen.'' 

4 Charles Montague (1661-1715), afterwards Earl of Halifax; like 
Cowley a graduate of Trinity College ; an intimate friend of Sir Isaac 
Newton. He became famous as Chancellor of the Exchequer under 



10 ESSAY ON MILTON 

pole * many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may 
now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to 
mathematics, learn more than the great Newton 2 knew 
after half a century of study and meditation. 

12. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or 
with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The 
progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with bet- 
ter objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the in- 
struments which are necessary to the mechanical opera- 
tions of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But 
language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his 
purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, 
first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from par- 
ticular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of 
an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civil- 
ized people is poetical. 

13. This change in the language of men is partly the 
cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in 
the nature of their intellectual operations, a change by 
which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is 
necessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particu- 
larly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. 

William III. for his extraordinary skill in finance. Under his advice 
and guidance the Bank of England was founded, and he took the 
measures also which began the national debt of England. See Macau- 
lay, History of England, vol. vii. , chap. xix. 

2 Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the great finance minister of 
George II., who developed especially the excise duties. His policy 
was devoted to preserving peace abroad and establishing principles of 
sound finance and of economical taxation at home. 

2 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), another Fellow of Trinity, an unri- 
valled genius in mathematical speculation. His most famous book 
was entitled Philosophiae Naturalis Princlpia Mathematica. His great 
discoveries were in optics, in gravitation, and in the invention of 
mathematical processes. See Hawthorne's True Stories for a little 
biography of this famous man. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 11 

In proportion as men know more and think more, tliey 
look less at individuals and more at classes. They there- 
fore make better theories and worse poems. They give us 
vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities 
instead of men. They may be better able to analyse hu- 
man nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not 
the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to 
dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftes- 
bury. 1 He may refer all human actions to self-interest like 
Helvetius, 2 or he may never think about the matter at all. 
His creed on such subjects will no more influence his 
poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter 
may have conceived respecting the lacrymal 3 glands, or the 
circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, 4 



1 The third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-171?)), an amiable and shy young 
man, for whom public-school life was too rough, and who therefore 
learned his Greek from Eliza Birch by the ''natural method." His 
fame as a writer is chiefly due to a book on human actions entitled 
Characteristics. He maintains that men have a special sense which 
sees right and wrong as the eye sees light. He invented for this the 
term "moral sense," which phrase he may be said to have contributed 
to the English language. 

2 Helvetius (1715-1771), a popular philosopher in Parisian society 
about a generation before the French Revolution. He was a curious 
person, so vain of popular applause that he appeared once as a stage- 
dancer. His chief work, entitled Be V Esprit {On the Human Mind), 
maintained that self -interest was the spring of all human action, that 
there was no such thing as right and wrong apart from what is pleas- 
ant and painful. This, he says, is u Le secret de tout le nionde." 
His book made a great stir, incurring even the notice of the Sorbonne 
and the Parliament of Paris. 

3 Lacrymal, secreting tears. 

4 In Greek mythology a queen whose pride in her children led her 
to make impious comparisons of them to Apollo and Artemis, the 
children of Latona. Her children were therefore slain by the arrows 
of these gods, while Niobe, after vainly trying to defend them, became 
changed into a rock, weeping forever. 



12 ESSAY ON MILTON 

or the blushes of his Aurora. 1 If Shakespeare had written 
a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means 
certain that it would have been a good one. It is ex- 
tremely improbable that it would have contained half so 
much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the 
Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville 2 have created 
an Iago ? 3 Well as he knew how to resolve characters 
into their elements, would he have been able to combine 
those elements in such a manner as to make up a man — a 
real, living, individual man ? 

14. Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy 
poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything 
which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsound- 
ness. By poetry we mean, not, of course, all writing in 
verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition 
excludes many metrical compositions which, on other 
grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean, 
the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce 
an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means 
of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus 
the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally 
admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and 

i Aurora, the goddess of dawn, always rosy and blushing, according 
to Greek and Latin poetic fancy. 

2 Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), a satirical writer. The Fable 
of the Bees appeared in 1705. The moral of the fable is that it is the 
selfishness and extravagance, and even the vices of society, which make 
the market for labor. Thus luxury is the root of all civilisation, and 
" Private Vices, Publick Benefits" The fable narrates that certain 
Bees left their busy hive and went off to live a frugal life in a hollow 
tree, where by their injudicious temperance and virtue they all 
starved. 

41 . . . Fools only strive 
To make a great, an honest hive." 

3 A principal character in Shakespeare's Othello, a famous villain. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 13 

still more valuable on account of the just notion which 
they convey of the art in which he excelled : 

11 As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name," l 

These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he ascribes 
to the poet — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. 
Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the truth of 
madness. The reasonings are just ; but the premises 2 are 
false. After the first suppositions have been made, every- 
thing ought to be consistent ; but those first suppositions 
require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a 
partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, 
of all people, children are the most imaginative. They 
abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. 
Every image which is strongly presented to their mental 
eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, what- 
ever his sensibility 3 may be, is ever affected by Hamlet 
or Lear, 4 as a little girl is affected by the story of poor 
Eed Eicling-hood. She knows that it is all false, that 
wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. 
Yet, in spite of her knowledge, she believes ; she weeps, 
she trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she 
should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such 
is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated 
minds. 

1 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, Act V. , Sc. I. 

2 Premises, a term in logic; better "premisses." It means a prop- 
osition, belief in which leads to belief in another proposition called a 
conclusion. 

3 In current English we are apt to use "sensitiveness" instead of 
" sensibility," in this meaning of " capncity for acute feeling." But 
notice the title of Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. 

4 Shakespeare's well-known plays. 



14 ESSAY ON MILTON 

15. In a rude state of society, men are children with a 
greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of 
society that we may expect to find the poetical tempera- 
ment in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age 
there will be much intelligence, much science, much 
philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle 
analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of 
verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. Men 
will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They 
will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and 
to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be 
able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their 
ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of 
belief. The Greek Ehapsodists, according to Plato, could 
not recite Homer without almost falling into convulsions. 1 
The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he 
shouts his death-song. 2 The power which the ancient bards 3 

1 Plato's Ion, pp. 535, 536. Socrates says to Ion, who was a Khapso- 
dist, or professional reciter of poetry, " When you produce your great 
effects, in the recitation of some striking passage, are you in your right 
mind ? Does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the per- 
sons and places of which she is speaking?" — u Yes," says Ion, "I 
must confess that at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and 
when I speak of heroes my hair stands on end and my heart beats." — 
"Strictly speaking such a one is not in his right mind." Plato (429- 
347 B.C.), the great Athenian philosopher, views poets exactly as Ma- 
caulay does here, as beings of an abnormal structure akin to mania. 
" Poets are winged and holy things," he says, "not be allowed to live 
in a well-ordered state." 

2 Mohawks, a tribe of Indians in what is now the State of New York. 
They were the first tribe of this region to obtain firearms, and they 
were so conspicuous in the history of the early settlers that their name 
was used by the English for the Iroquois in general, and therefore be- 
came a proverbial expression for the fiercest Indians. 

3 A Celtic word for the national poets in Wales and Ireland. These 
singers of the deeds of heroes, of victories of the nation and tribe, and 
chanters of pedigrees, continue to be found in historic times. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 15 

of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems 
to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are 
very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among 
those who participate most in its improvements. They 
linger longest among the peasantry. 

16. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as 
a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. 
And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry 
effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the 
light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the 
outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and 
the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues 
and lineaments of the phantoms which it calls up, grow 
fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible 
advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment 
of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 

17. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, as- 
pires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. 
He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He 
must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps 
constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His 
very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties 
will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which 
are fashionable among his contemporaries ; and that pro- 
ficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and 
activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacri- 
fices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man, 
or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time * great 
talents, intense labour, and long meditation, enrployed in 

iThe allusion here is probably to the poets of tlie " Lake School,' 7 
especially to Wordsworth, whose effort to abandon the lofty diction 
which had grown fashionable in English poetry, and to return in his 
verses to the simple language of life's simple feelings was at first very 
offensive to his contemporaries. The Lyrical Ballads came out in 
1798. 



16 ESSAY ON MILTON 

this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, 
we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success 
and feeble applause. 

18. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever tri- 
umphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received 
a learned education. He was a profound and elegant clas- 
sical scholar ; he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbini- 
cal l literature ; he was intimately acquainted with every 
language of modern Europe from which either pleasure or 
information was then to be derived. 2 He was perhaps the 
only great poet of later times who has been distinguished 
by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Pe- 
trarch 3 was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in 
the ancient language, though much praised by those who 
have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cow- 
ley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little 
imagination ; nor indeed do we think his classical diction 
comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson 4 
is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the 
bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly 
insensible to the Augustan 5 elegance, and was as ill quali- 

§§ 18-20. Second topic : Milton's Latin Poetry. 

1 Jewish, writings composed chiefly after the Christian era by the 
Rabbis or masters expounding the law. They enjoyed an authority 
almost equal to that of the sacred Scriptures. 

2 Milton read not only Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but also French, 
Italian, Dutch, and Spanish. 

3 Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), the first true reviver of classical 
learning in Europe after the middle ages. He wrote a Latin epic, 
Africa, and was crowned with a laurel wreath for it in Rome. He 
wrote also Latin eclogues and epistles. His Latin was, however, 
mediseval ; he was devoted to the ideal of restoring classic Latin to 
the world, but he had little direct knowledge of classic authors him- 
self. 

4 See Introduction, 6. 

5 The Augustan age was the time of the Emperor Augustus, when 
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, and other great Roman writers lived. 



ESSAY ON MILT OK 17 

fiecl to judge between two Latin styles., as a habitual drunk- 
ard to set up for a wine-taster. 

19. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far- 
fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere 
may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. 
The soils on which this rarity flourishes are, in general, 
as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as 
the flower -pots of a hothouse to the growth of oaks. That 
the author of the Paradise Lost should have written the 
Epistle to Manso 1 was truly wonderful. Never before 
were such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry 
found together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton, 
the artificial manner indispensable to such works is ad- 
mirably preserved ; while, at the same time, the richness 
of his fancy and the elevation of his sentiments give to 
them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, 
which distinguishes them from all other writings of the 
same class. They remind us of the amusements of those 
angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 

" About him exercised heroic games 

The unarmed youth of heaven". Brit o'er their heads 

Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear, 

Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold." 2 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the 
genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse 
of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accus- 
tomed to wear. The strength of his imagination tri- 

The word became proverbial for any epoch when good taste prevailed 
in literature. 

1 Manso, Marquis of Villa, was the great man of Naples when Mil- 
ton visited it. The old man was very kind to the young poet, making 
much of him and introducing him to other literary people. For this 
Milton wrote him on his return a beautiful epistle in Latin hexame- 
ters, one of his best-known Latin poems. See Introduction, 11. 

2 Paradise Lost, IV., 551-554. 



18 ESSAY ON MILTON 

umphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was 
the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated 
beneath the weight of its fuel, but penetrated the whole 
superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. 1 

20. It is not our intention to attempt anything like a 
complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public 
has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable 
passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and 
the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to 
equal, and no parodist 2 to degrade, which displays in their 
highest perfection the idiomatic 3 powers of the English 
tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern 
language has contributed something of grace, of energy, 
or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we 
are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their 
sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negli- 
gent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a 
sheaf. 

21. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of 
Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by 
means of which it acts on the reader. 5 Its effect is pro- 
duced, not so much by what it expresses as by what it 
suggests, not so much by the ideas which it directly con- 
veys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. 
He electrifies the mind through conductors. 4 The most 
unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer 
gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion ; 

1 For Milton's Latin Poems, see Milton's Poems in the edition of 
Masson, 3 vols. (Macmillan). Perhaps the best of them all is the 
Epitaphium Damonis, dedicated to his friend, Charles Diodati. 

2 Parodist, a writer of ludicrous imitations of poetry. 

3 Idiomatic, peculiar to a certain language. 

4 As electricity is carried to any remote place by a good conductor, 
so Milton's vocabulary brings ideas from a vast distance into the mind 
of the reader. 



ESS AT ON MILTON 19 

but takes the whole upon himself,, and sets his images in 
so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. 
The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, 
unless the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the 
writer. He does not paint a finished picture or play for 
a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to 
fill up the outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects 
his hearer to make out the melody. 

22. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 
The expression in general means nothing, but, applied to 
the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry 
acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious 
meaning than in its occult * power. There would seem, at 
first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. 
But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they 
pronounced, than the past is present, and the distant near. 
New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all 
the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. 
Change the structure of the sentence ; substitute one 
synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. 
The spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope 
to conjure with it, would find himself as much mistaken 
as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying : 
" Open Wheat/' " Open Barley/' to the door which obeyed 
no sound but " Open Sesame ! " 2 The miserable failure of 
Dryden, 3 in his attempt to rewrite some parts of the 
Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. 

§§ 20-25. Third topic: Some striking characteristics of Milton's 
poetic methods. A description of the effect produced by the peculiar sug- 
gestiveness of the words he uses. Examples, D Allegro, and II Penseroso. 

1 Occult, concealed, " where more is meant than meets the ear." 

2 In old versions of the Arabian Nights was included a famous 
Turkish tale, " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." " Sesame "is a 
kind of grain. 

3 John Dryden (1631-1700), the great poet of the next generation in 
England. He composed an opera called The State of Innocence, 



20 ESSAY ON MIL TOW 

23. In support of these observations, we may remark 
that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more 
generally known, or more frequently repeated, than those 
which are little more than master-rolls of names. 1 They 
are not always more appropriate or more melodious than 
other names. But they are charmed names. Every one 
of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 
Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in man- 
hood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, 
they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their 
intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote pe- 
riod of history. Another places us among the novel scenes 
and manners of a distant country » A third evokes all the 
dear classical recollections of childhood, the school-room, 
the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth 
brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous ro- 
mance, the trophied lists, 2 the embroidered housings, 3 the 
quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gar- 
dens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the 
smiles of rescued princesses. 

of which, the libretto was manufactured out of Paradise Lost. Here 
are some verses : 

u If thou art he, but O, how changed from him, 
Companion of my Arms, how wan, how dim, 
How faded all thy glories are ! I see 
Myself too well, and my own change in thee." 

Milton is said to have given Dryden leave to do this work, saying, 
good-naturedly, "Ay, ay, you may tag my verses." A "tag" was a 
silver ornament worn on the ends of ribbons in those days for show. 
Milton's allusion is to the tinkling rhymes on the ends of Dryden' s verses. 

1 Specimens of these "muster-rolls of names'* are found in Par- 
adise Lost, I., 580-585; II, 525-545 ; IV., 276-283 ; and elsewhere. 

2 Lists, the space enclosed by the ropes or barriers at a tournament. 
Trophied, adorned with trophies, the spoils taken from conquered ene- 
mies. 

3 Housings, the trappings of the horses, especially cloths or covers, 
more or less ornamental, laid over the saddle. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 21 

24. In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar man- 
ner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the 
Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mech- 
anism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree 
of perfection. These poems differ from others as atar l of 
roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed es- 
sence from the thin diluted mixture. They are, indeed, 
not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of 
which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every 
epithet is a text for a stanza. 2 

25. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works 
which, though of very different merit, offer some marked 
points of resemblance. They are both lyric poems in 
the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of 
composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the 
ode. 3 The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out 
of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As 
soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illu- 
sion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which 
is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter, or the 
entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was that the trage- 
dies of Byron 4 were his least successful performances. 

§§ 25-30. Fourth tjpic : Milton's dramatic poetry. Like the Greek 
drama, it has much of the lyric character. The Greek drama and 
Samson Agonistes ; Comus and the Italian masques. 

1 Atar of roses, usually written " attar," " otto " ; an essential oil of 
roses made in Turkey. It takes one hundred and fifty pounds of rose- 
leaves to make an ounce of the atar. 

2 Macaulay wrote " canto " in the first edition. A stanza is a series of 
lines grouped together in a fixed order, composing a part of a poem. A 
canto is a much larger thing, a division of some length in a long poem 

3 Lyric, delineating the poet's own thoughts and feelings. Drama, a 
story of passions and feelings not belonging to the poet, conveyed by 
action and representation of persons. Ode, a lyric poem of the most 
exalted kind, expressing the highest feelings of the poet. 

4 Byron (1788-1824) was reviewed in the Edinburgh in 1830 by Ma- 



22 ESSAY ON MILTON 

They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the 
friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single mova- 
ble head goes round twenty different bodies ; so that the 
same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform 
of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. 
In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and 
lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold x were discernible in 
an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to 
the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of 
the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his 
town emotions. 

26. Between these hostile elements many great men have 
endeavored to effect an amalgamation, but never with com- 
plete success. The Greek Drama, on the model of which 
the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The dia- 
logue was engrafted on the chorus, 2 and naturally partook 
of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athe- 
nian dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under 
which tragedy made its first appearance. iEschylus 3 was, 

caulay. The idea here expressed about Byron is in that paper ex- 
panded and explained. 

1 Byron's first and best-known poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 
describes in the character of the hero his own melancholy spirit jour- 
neying over Europe. 

2 The Greek Drama was evolved from choruses sung by bands of 
dancing villagers around the altars of harvest gods. During these 
hymns they imitated the actions of the gods and heroes which their 
songs described. Afterwards a narrator and actor joined in dialogue 
with them. Finally several actors and a regular stage were intro- 
duced and the Drama was thus created. But, as Macaulay says, the 
dramatic element was to the end subordinated to the lyric. 

3 ^Eschylus (525-456 B.C.), the first of the three great Greek trage- 
dians. As to the " Oriental tincture " in his poetry, it cannot be true 
that he borrowed anything from Asia. Rather was his spirit a kindred 
one to that of the Orient, for in common with the poets and prophets 
of the Hebrew race he had a deep sense of the mystical meaning in 
human life, while in common with the Greek race he could express 



H 88 AT ON MILTON 23 

head and hearty a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had 
far more intercourse with the East than in the days of 
Homer ; and they had not yet acquired that immense 
superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in 
the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics 
with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus, 1 it 
should seem that they still looked up with the veneration 
of disciples to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accord- 
ingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should 
be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we 
think, is clearly discernible in the works of Pindar 2 and 
iEschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew 
writers. The Book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, 
bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. 
Considered as plays, his works are absurd : considered as 
choruses, they are above all praise. (If, for instance, we 
examine the address of Clytaemnestra to Agamemnon on 
his return, 3 or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, 4 
by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly 
condemn them as monstrous. But, if we forget the charac- 

his ideas under beautiful plastic forms. Milton resembles iEschylus 
in his fondness for imagining vast incorporeal personages and allegori- 
cal beings. 

Herodotus (484-424 B.C.), one of the earliest writers of Greek His- 
tory. He depicts, as in a drama, the evolution of the struggle, cen- 
turies old, between Asia and Europe for control of the Mediterranean 
world. His history culminates in the victory of Greece at Marathon 
and Salamis. In the course of his work he has much to say in long 
digressions upon Egypt and Assyria. 

2 Pindar (522-443 B.C.) writer of odes, chiefly in honor of victors at 
various sacred national games. 

3 In the greatest play of iEschylus, called the Agamemnon, translated 
into English by Robert Browning (Aristophanes' Apology) and by 
Edward Fitzgerald ( The Agamemnon). 

4 In the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, telling how in the quarrel of 
the house of Cadmus for the sovereignty of Thebes, that city was 
besieged by seven Argive champions, 



24 ESSAY ON MILTON 

ters, and think only of the poetry* we shall admit that it 
has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence* 
Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was Con- 
sistent with its original form. His portraits of men have 
a sort of similarity ; but it is the similarity, not of paint- 
ing, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance, but it 
does not produce an illusion. 1 Euripides attempted to 
carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond 
his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of cor- 
recting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He 
substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 2 
27. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly 
— much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides de- 
served. Indeed the caresses which this partiality leads 
him to bestow on " sad Electra's poet/' 3 sometimes remind 
us of the beautiful Queen of Fairyland kissing the long 
ears of Bottom. 4 At all events, there can be no doubt 

Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), the second and greatest of the Greek 
tragedians. He excelled in sharp and delicate character-drawing ; and 
he knew, in spite of tragedy's " sceptred pall," how to exhibit the com- 
plexities of human life as it is. Of course all his work was done under 
the traditions of the Greek stage. The Greek drama is always suggest- 
ive of sculpture rather than of painting ; it aims at symmetry, rhythm, 
and equipoise, rather than at vivacity and color. The art of Sopho- 
cles in particular is characterized by a refined and balanced perfection 
wrought quietly out in harmonious and beautiful details. But it is 
quite too much to say that it u does not produce an illusion." 

2 Euripides (480-406 B.C.), the third of the Greek tragedians. Ma- 
■caulay modified this unfavorable judgment of Euripides in his later 
years. He wrote in his copy of Euripides in 1835, u I can hardly ac- 
count for the contempt which. I felt, at school and college, for Eu- 
ripides. I own I like him better now than Sophocles." But there is 
some justice nevertheless in these strictures on the art of Euripides. 
In trying to adapt the form of Greek tragedy to the representation of 
scenes from life Euripides overpassed the limits of possibility. 

3 See Milton's Sonnet VIII. 

4 See Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv., Sc. 1. 



ESS AT ON MILTON 25 

that his veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, 
was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had he taken 
iEschylus for his model, he would have given himself up 
to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the 
treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on 
those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work 
rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to 
reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent, he has 
failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot 
identify ourselves with the characters as in a good play. 
We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good 
ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an 
alkali l mixed, neutralize each other. We are by no means 
insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the 
severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solem- 
nity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric mel- 
ody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. 
Bat we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of 
the genius of Milton. 

28. The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian 
Masque, 2 as the Samson is framed on the model of the 
Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of 
the kind which exists in any language. It is as far supe- 
rior to the Faithful Shepherdess as the Faithful Shep- 

1 Two groups of substances of which each group possesses the qual- 
ity of destroying the characteristic chemical properties of the members 
of the other group. 

2 A Masque or mask, a form of dramatic spectacle much in vogue in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It contained spoken verse, music, 
and dancing. "The origin of the dramatic masque of the sixteenth 
century has been traced by antiquaries as far back as the time of Ed- 
ward III. But in its perfected shape it was a genuine offspring of the 
English Renaissance, a cross between the English mystery-play and 
the Greek drama." As the taste for open-air pageant died out, 
masques yielded to operas, their modern equivalent. They nourished 
most in the reigns of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James L, and Charles I. 



26 ESS AT ON MILTON 

herdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor 
Eido. 1 It was well for Milton that he had here no Euri- 
pides to mislead him. He understood and loved the lit- 
erature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the 
same veneration which he entertained for the remains of 
Athenian and Eoman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty 
and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his 
Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had 
a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, some- 
times even to a bald style ; but false brilliancy was his 
utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet 
attire ; but she turned with disgust from the finery of 
Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney- 
sweeper on May-day. 2 Whatever ornaments she wears are 
of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable 
of standing the severest test of the crucible. 3 

29. Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction 
which he neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque 
what it ought to be ? essentially lyrical, and dramatic 
only in semblance.; He has not attempted a fruitless 
struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that 
species of composition ; and he has therefore succeeded 

1 The Faithful Shepherdess, by John Fletcher (1579-1625), the liter- 
ary partner of Beaumont. "It is a lyric poem, in semi-dramatic 
shape, to be judged only as such, and as such almost faultless." 
Swinburne. The Aminta is by Tasso (1544-1595). The Pastor 
Fido is by Guarini (1537-1612). These three pastoral dramas are all 
of about the same date, depicting the loves of swains and shepherd- 
esses. 

' 2 See Charles Lamb's essay on Chimney-sweepers, Essays of Mia. 
May- day was the great holiday for the poor little wretches, who were 
forced in Macaulay's youth to climb up the inside of English chim- 
neys to clean out the soot. They went about decorated on this day 
with ribbons and garlands. 

3 Crucible, a vessel or melting pot for chemical tests. The word is 
connected with "crock, crockery." 



ESSAY ON MILTON 27 

wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must 
be read as majestic soliloquies ; and he who so reads them 
will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity,, 
and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, how- 
ever, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the 
illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which 
are lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much 
commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton/ in a let- 
ter to Milton, "the tragical part, if the lyrical did not 
ravish me with a certain Dorique 2 delicacy in your songs 
and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to you I have 
seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The criticism 
was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of 
the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labor of unit- 
ing two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge 
his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even 
above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting 
from the earthly form and weeds 3 of Thyrsis, 4 he stands 
forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he seems to cry ex- 

ultingly — 

" Now my task is smoothly done 
I can fly or I can run," 

1 Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), a wit and scholar of James the 
First's court. Admired and trusted by the King, he might have had 
high place in English history had he been willing to become one of 
the courtiers and advisers of James. But he chose pleasanter paths 
of literary and political life. He was made at his own request ambas- 
sador to Venice, as he said, " to tell lies for the good of his country." 
He was promoted thence to be Provost of Eton, becoming a neighbor 
and friend of Milton. See Walton's Lives for a beautiful account of him. 

2 Greek pastoral poetry was written in Doric Greek of Sicily. Hence 
" Doric " means "pastoral or rural in sound." " The tragical part" 
means simply the dialogue. 

3 An old Saxon word for a garment, now disused except in the 
phrase " widow's weeds." 

4 Thyrsis, a name for shepherds in Greek pastoral poetry. The 
verses are lines 1012, 1013 of Comus. 



28 ESSAY ON MILTON 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the 
Elysian 1 dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy 
smells of nard and cassia, 2 which the musky wings of the 
zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hespe- 
rides. 3 

30. There are several of the minor poems of Milton on 
which we would willingly make a few remarks. 4 Still 
more willingly would we enter into a detailed examina- 
tion of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, 
which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except 
as an instance of the blindness of that parental affection 
which men of letters bear towards the offspring of their 
intellects. That Milton, was mistaken in preferring this 
work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we must 
readily admit. 5 But we are sure that the superiority of 
the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more 
decided than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to 

§§ 30-47. Fifth topic: Paradise Lost. Parallel between Milton 
and Dante. A discussion of Milton's superiority in the management 
of the agency of supernatural beings. 

1 Elysium, the abode of the blessed, according to Greek mythology. 
All these pretty phrases are quoted from the same song in Comus, vss. 
774 to the end. 

2 " All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia." Psalms 
xlv. 8. Milton's phrases are often culled from the English Bible. 

3 Hesperides, daughters of Hesperus, who dwell in some mysterious 
earthly paradise, lying in the unknown West (in Greek, Hesperos). 

4 Macaulay dismisses in this little sentence Lycidas, and the great 
Ode on the Nativity, without further allusion, together with a large 
number of other interesting short poems. The student of Milton 
must be prepared to supplement Macaulay's essay with many other 
books. See Suggestions for Teachers and Students, iii. (2). 

5 There is no evidence that Milton thought this work superior to 
Paradise Lost. His nephew, Philips, simply says that when people 
said it was inferior, " he could not hear with patience any such thing 
related to him." It is a short poem of three books, telling very simply 
of Christ's temptation. 






ESSAY ON MILTON 29 

every poem which has since made its appearance. But 
our limits prevent us from discussing the point at length. 
We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the 
general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class 



& 



of human compositions. 

y31. The only poem of modern times which can be 
compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Com- 
edy. 1 The subject of Milton in some points resembled 
that of Dante ; but he has treated it in a widely differ- 
ent manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our 
opinion respecting our own great poet than by contrasting 
him with the father of Tuscan 2 literature. 

32. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as 
the hieroglyphics 3 of Egypt differed from the picture- 
writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs 
speak for themselves . they stand simply for what they 
are. . Those of Milton have a signification which is often 
discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends 
less on what they directly represent than on what they 
remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque 4 
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, 
he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, 
the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the 

1 The English name by which Dante's great poem is known. Dante 
called it Commedia, because the ending is not tragical. His admirers 
called it ll Divine." 

-Dante was a citizen of Florence of Tuscany, and was the first fa- 
mous writer in the native Italian of that land. 

3 The picture-writing of the Indians is always a rude representation 
of the thing signified. Even so Dante repres?nts things directly. But 
the Egyptian hieroglyphics represent words or syllables, or it may be 
letters only. So Milton's words suggest ideas remote from themselves, 
and his descriptions are not intelligible unless you know the inner 
meanings of his words. 

4 Grotesque, "found in a grotto ; " fantastic, like the grotto-work of 
the Renaissance. Compare '* antic," like the antique.. 



30 E8SAY ON MILTON 

numbers ; he measures the size. His similes are the illus- 
trations of a traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and 
especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, busi- 
ness-like manner, not for the sake of any beauty in the 
objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of 
any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but 
simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as 
clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the 
precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of 
hell x were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige 
on the south of Trent. 2 The cataract of Phlegethon 3 was 
like that of Aqua Oheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. 4 
The place where the heretics were confined in burning 
tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Aries. 5 

33. Now, let us compare with the exact details of Dante 
the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. 
The English poet has never thought of taking the measure 
of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. 
In one passage, the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, 
floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born ene- 
mies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mis- 

1 Dante's poem represents hirn as descending, circle after circle, 
round the sides of the pit of hell. In each round he meets different 
scenes of punishment arranged for different sorts of crime, the lowest 
being the worst. 

2 The Adige, a foaming mountain torrent, full of wild bowlders, 
running between the lofty hills of the Brenner pass. On it stands the 
city of Trent. 

3 u The Fire-river," one of the streams of the under-world in 
Greek myth. 

4 Near Naples. 

5 Aries is in France, near the mouth of the Rhone. " As at Aries, 
where the Rhone stagnates, sepulchres make all the places uneven ; 
so did they here. . . . Among the tombs flames were scattered. 
All their lids were lifted and dire laments were issuing f ortji. "-^iH- 
fe? t no 1 Canto IX. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 31 

takes for an island. 1 When he addresses himself to battle 
against the guardian angels, -he stands like Teneriffe 2 or 
Atlas; 3 his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these 
descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the 
gigantic spectre of Nimrod. 4 " His face seemed to me as 
long and as broad as the ball 5 of St. Peter's at Rome, and 
his other limbs were in proportion ; so that the bank, which 
concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless 
showed so much of him that three tall Germans 6 would in 
vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible 
that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Floren- 
tine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation 7 is not at hand ; and 
our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our 
meaning. 

34. Once more, compare the lazar-house 8 in the eleventh 
book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Male- 
bolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and 
takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous image- 
ry — Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the 
wretches with his attendance ; Death shaking his dart over 

1 Paradise Lost, Book I., verse 194 ; Book IV., verse 985. 

2 The Peak of Teneriffe is on the largest of the Canary Islands, off 
the coast of Africa. It is 12,200 feet high. Atlas is a mountain in 
Morocco, more than 12,000 feet high. 3 Inferno, Canto XXXI. 

4 The a pine cone " of bronze, from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, in 
Dante's time stood in the fore court of St. Peter's. It is now in the 
Vatican Garden. " Ball " is a mistranslation. 

5 " Frieslanders," supposed to be very tall. 

6 Cary's translation remains the standard poetical translation of the 
Divine Comedy. For students the prose translation of Charles Eliot 
Norton (3 vols., octavo. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is rather to be com- 
mended 

7 Lazar house, Italian lazaretto, a hospital for those diseased, named 
for Lazarus in the parable. 

8 Paradise Lost, Book XL, verse 567 ; Inferno, Canto XXIX. " Male- 
bolge is a place in Hell, all of stone, and of an iron color.''— Canto 
XVIII. 



32 ESSAY ON MILTON 

them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. 
What says Dante ? " There was such a moan there as 
there would be if all the sick who, between July and Sep- 
tember, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tus- 
can swamps, and of Sardinia, 1 were in one pit together ; 
and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from 
decayed limbs. " 

35. AVe will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of 
settling precedency between two such writers. Each, in his 
own department, is incomparable ; and each, we may re- 
mark, has, wisely or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to 
exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The 
Divine Comedy 2 is a personal narrative, Dante is the 
eye-witness and ear- witness of that which he relates. He 
is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits cry- 
ing out for the second death, 3 who has read the dusky char- 
acters on the portal within which there is no hope, 4 who 
has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, 5 who 
has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbaric- 
cia and Draghignazzo. 6 His own hands have grasped the 
shaggy sides of Lucifer. 7 His own feet have climbed the 
mountain 8 of expiation. His own brow has been marked 

1 These geographical names are all of unhealthy places belonging 
to Italy. 

2 " The personages of Dante are all from real life. They are men 
and women undergoing actual experiences. Their characters and fates 
are, what all human characters and fates really are, types of spiritual 
law." 3 Inferno, Canto I. 

4 On the doors of Hell were written, " All ye that enter here leave 
Hope behind."— Canto III. 5 Canto IX. 

6 The names of two of the fiends in the weird scene in Canto XXL, 
who plunge sinners into a pit full of burning pitch. 

7 Dante climbs out of Hell by clinging to and crawling up the body 
of the giant Lucifer.— Canto XXXIV. 

8 The Mount of Purgatory, up which Dante climbs on the way from 
the Pit of Hell to the Heights of Heaven. 



ESSAY OiY MILTON 33 

by the purifying angel. 1 The reader would throw aside 
such a tale in incredulous disgust unless it were told 
with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in 
its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in 
its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs 
from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis 2 differ 
from those of Gulliver. 3 The author of Amadis would 
have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those 
minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of 
Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about 
names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and 
all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, spring- 
ing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not 
shocked at being told that a man, who lived nobody knows 
when, saw many very strange sights ; and we can easily 
abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But 
when Lemuel G-ulliver, surgeon, resident at Eotherhithe, 4 
tells us of pygmies, 5 and giants, flying islands and philos- 
ophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches 
could produce for a single moment a deception on the im- 
agination. 

36. Of all the poets who have introduced into their 
works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has suc- 

1 The angel who, at the entrance to Purgatory, marks Dante's brow 
with seven P's for the seven deadly sins (peccata). These marks dis- 
appear as he goes upward. 

2 The hero of a popular romance of chivalry, Amadis of Gaul. 

3 In Gulliver's Travels, the best known work of Dean Swift (1667- 
1745). 

4 An English village, to which Gulliver retired after his travels. 

5 Pygmy, a Greek word, describing a people of dwarfs in ancient 
Greek legend, who were supposed to measure one cubit (pygme) and 
to live in Africa. Such dwarf people have been found by recent ex- 
plorers all the way from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope. Macaulay 
uses the word here, as it is often used in English, as a general term 
for dwarfs. 

3 



34 ESSAY ON MILTON 

ceeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him ; and as 
this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judg- 
ments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on 
it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can 
possibly commit in the management of his machinery, is 
that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has 
been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions 
of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, 
though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we vent- 
ure to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. 

37. What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the por- 
tion of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We 
observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain them 
into material causes. AVe therefore infer that there exists 
something which is not material. But of this something 
we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We 
can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word, 
but we have no image of the thing ; and the business of 
poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses 
words indeed ; but they are merely the instruments of his 
art, not its objects. They are the materials which he is to 
dispose in such a manner as to present a picture to the 
mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no 
more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvass 
and a box of colours to be called a painting. 

38. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the 
great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in them. 
They must have images. The strong tendency of the mul- 
titude, in all ages and nations, to idolatry, can be ex- 
plained on no other principle. The first inhabitants of 
Greece, there is every reason to believe, worshipped one 
invisible deity. 1 But the necessity of having something 

1 All this is a doubtful speculation. The first inhabitants of Greece 
never were worshippers of one God. It is true that, as civilisation ad- 
vances in Greece, the number of Greek deities seems to us to increase. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 35 

more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the 
innumerable crowd of Gods and Goddesses. In like man- 
ner, the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the 
Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred 
to the sun the worship which, speculatively, they con- 
sidered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of 
the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between 
pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, 
and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible 
and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the 
secondary causes which Gibbon x has assigned for the rapid- 
ity with which Christianity spread over the world, while 
Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more 
powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the in- 
comprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. 
A philosopher might admire so noble a conception, but the 
crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented 
no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied 
in a human form — walking among men, partaking of their 
infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their 
graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross — 
that the prejudices of the Synagogue, 2 and the doubts of 
the Academy, 3 and the pride of the Portico, 4 and the fasces 

But this was because the Greek religious and aesthetic imagination 
deepened, so that the national power to represent deity in visible form 
increased. The national imaginative gifts, as well as the gradual 
grouping of many local deities in one Olympus, produced the " idola- 
trous" results described in the text. It was only slowly that the 
thinkers of the Greek race reached the idea of one invisible Godhead 
manifested in all gods. 

1 See, for the famous Five Causes of the Growth of Christianity, 
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire^ ch. xv. 

2 The Jewish congregation of worshippers. 

3 The most skeptical school of Greek Philosophy. It was named 
from the sacred grove of the hero Academos, m which Plato and Aris- 
totle held their schools. 

4 Portico, i.e., the Stoa Pcecile or Painted Porch, whence the Stoic 



36 ESS AT ON MILTON 

of the Lictor, 1 and the swords of thirty legions, were 
humbled in the dust ! Soon after Christianity had achieved 
its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to 
corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints 
assumed the offices of household gods. St. George 2 took 
the place of Mars ; St. Elmo 3 consoled the mariner for the 
loss of Castor and Pollux ; the Virgin Mother and Cecilia 4 
succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of 
sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial 
dignity, and the homage of chivalry was blended with that 
of religion. Eeformers have often made a stand against 
these feelings, but never with more than apparent and 
partial success. The men who demolished the images in 
cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those 
which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be 
difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. 

philosophers took their name. They were disciples of Zeno (about 
300 B.C.). That part of their philosophy which has been remembered 
best gives rules for conduct of life. A haughty superiority to the sor- 
rows and joys of life and an aristocratic aloofness from the common 
herd of mankind marked their ethical practice. 

1 The authority of the executive officers of Roman State was sym- 
bolised by the fasces or the axe and bundle of rods carried by an 
attendant called a Lictor. 

2 St. George of Cappadocia. the warrior saint and dragon -slayer, a 
great saint of the Eastern Church. His fame was carried to Europe 
by the Crusaders ; his day was made a holiday in the Western Church 
in 1222. After Edward III. he is noted specially as the patron-saint of 
England. The historical matter in his legend is very obscure, but lie 
is said to have been martyred in Diocletian's persecution in 303 a.d. 

3 St. Elmo, a patron of Italian sailors. "St. Elmo's fire" is the 
name given to the electric flames often seen about the masts and yards 
of ships. This was attributed to Castor and Pollux in ancient times. 

4 St. Cecilia (230 A.D.), patron-saint of church music. Her legend 
says that she sang praises to God just before her execution. St. 
Cecilia's Day is the occasion in England of yearly musical festivals. 
Handel's Messiah was written for such a celebration. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 37 

Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied be- 
fore they can excite a strong public feeling. The multi- 
tude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning 
badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most 
important principle. 

39. From these considerations, we infer that no poet who 
should affect that metaphysical accuracy, for the want of 
which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful 
failure. Still, however, there was another extreme which, 
though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The 
imaginations of men are in a great measure under the con- 
trol of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical 
colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed to 
represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous 
and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and 
theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to ab- 
stain from giving such a shock to their understandings as 
might break the charm which it was his object to throw 
over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of 
the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has 
often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it 
was absolutely necessary that the spirits should be clothed 
with material forms. " But/' says he, "the poet should 
have secured the consistency of his system by keeping im- 
materiality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it 
from his thoughts ? " This is easily said ; but what if 
Milton could not seduce the reader to drop it from his 
thoughts ? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full 
a possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even 
for the half belief which poetry requires ? Such we sus- 
pect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet 
to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. 
He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground : he 
left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so do- 
ing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency ; but, 



38 ESSAY ON MILTON 

though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe 
that he was poetically in the right. This task, which al- 
most any other writer would have found impracticable, was 
easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of 
communicating his meaning circuitously, through a long 
succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than 
he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities 
which he could not avoid. 

40. Poetry which relates to the beings of another world 
ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of 
Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed, be- 
yond any that ever was written. Its effect approaches to 
that produced by the pencil or the chisel ; but it is pict- 
uresque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault, 
indeed, on the right side, a fault inseparable from the 
plan of his poem, which, as we have already observed, 
rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. 
Still, it is a fault. His supernatural agents excite an in- 
terest, but it is not the mysterious interest which is proper 
to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk with 
his ghosts and daemons, 1 without any emotion of unearthly 
awe. We could, like Don Juan, 2 ask them to supper, and 
eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good 
men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execution- 
ers. His dead men are merely living men in strange sit- 
uations. The scene which passes between the poet and 
Farinata 3 is justly celebrated. Still Farinata in the burn- 
ing tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an 

1 Now spelled, demons. 

2 In Mozart's opera Don Juan, the hero invites to sup with him the 
statue of the dead Commendatore whom he had slain. A devil ani- 
mates the statue ; it accepts the invitation ; a weird banquet is given, 
and in the midst of it the statue fetches away the sinful hero to hell. 

3 Farinata speaks to Dante from the interior of a burning tomb. 
Inferno, Canto X. 



ESSAY OJY MILTON 39 

auto dafe. 1 Nothing can be more touching than the first 
interview of Dante and Beatrice. 2 Yet what is it but a 
lovely woman chiding, with sweet, austere composure, the 
lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices 
she reprobates ? The feelings which give the passage its 
charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the 
summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 

41. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all 
other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful 
creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They 
are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They 
have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso 3 
and Klopstock. 4 They have just enough in common with 
human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their 
characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim 
resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic 
dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 

42. Perhaps the gods and daemons of ^Eschylus may best 
bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. 5 

1 Literally " act of faith," a Portuguese phrase for a public act of 
punishment of heretics, e.g., by burning them alive. 

2 Beatrice Portinari was a maiden of Florence whom Dante wor- 
shipped with a highly idealised poet's love. She died, a young 
girl, ten years before the writing of the Divine Comedy. She figures, 
however, in the poem as a visionary being who guides Dante through 
Paradise. This celestial creature symbolises the highest thoughts and 
aspirations of the poet himself. The poet's lower aims are called 
with the same symbolism his "lesser loves." For these "lesser loves " 
Beatrice chides him when she first meets him in the other world. See 
Purgatorio, Canto XXX. 

3 Tasso, a celebrated Italian epic poet (1544-1595). He wrote Bi- 
naldo and Jerusalem Delivered. 

4 Klopstock, a German poet (1729-1803), wrote a poem called The 
Messiah. Both Tasso and Klopstock portray evil spirits in a some- 
what crude fashion. 

5 Daemon, a Greek word meaning a spirit. Here Macaulay uses 
it for those incorporeal creations of iEschylus, neither gods nor mor- 



40 ESSAY ON MILTON 

The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, some- 
thing of the Oriental character ; and the same peculiarity 
may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the 
amenity 1 and elegance which we generally find in the 
superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and 
colossal. His legends seem to harmonise less with the 
fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in which his coun- 
trymen paid their vows to the God of Light and God- 
dess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque 
labyrinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt enshrined her 
mystic Osiris, 2 or in which Hindostan still bows down to 
her seven-headed idols. 3 His favourite gods are those of the 
elder generations — the sons of heaven and earth, compared 
with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart 
— the gigantic Titans 4 and the inexorable Furies. Fore- 
most among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, 5 
half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen 
and implacable enemy of heaven. He bears undoubtedly a 
considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both 
we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, 

tals, like the personages called * 'Force" and "Might," or the "Fu- 
ries," or u Prometheus." 
J Amenity, pleasing quality. 

2 Osiris, a chief god of Egypt, god of the dead in the after-life, a 
deity personifying the triumph of the human soul over death. He 
was worshipped with mystical ceremonies in the Egyptian funeral cus- 
toms. 

3 In the Hindu mythology the gods symbolise their power by the 
number of their heads and limbs. 

4 The Titans, a mysterious group of deities in Greek mythology, 
considered to have preceded and to have been dethroned by the 
reigning deities of the Olympian dynasty. 

5 Prometheus, a Titan who befriended man against the rjurp° ses of 
Zeus by the gift of fire, stolen from heaven, which fire symbolises also 
the inventive intelligence. For this he was punished by Zeus by im- 
prisonment in chains on a lonely rock where vultures tore him and 
sun and cold beat on him without mercy. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 41 

the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also 
are mingled, though in very different proportions, some 
kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is 
hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his 
chains and his uneasy posture : he is rather too much de- 
pressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on 
the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of 
his torturer * in his hands, and that the hour of his release 
will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious 
over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot 
be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and 
even exults. Against the sword of Michael, 2 against the 
thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the 
marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an 
eternity of unintermittent misery, his spirit bears up un- 
broken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no 
support from anything external, nor even from hope itself ! 3 
43. To return for a moment to the parallel which we 
have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, 
we would- add, that the poetry of these great men has in a 
considerable degree taken its character from their moral 
qualities. They are not egotists. 4 They rarely obtrude 

1 The myth relates that Prometheus knew some secret ordinance of 
Fate, under which some one was to arise who should cast out Zeus from 
sovereign power in heaven and release Prometheus from punishment. 
Zeus sent the god Hermes, in the play, to extort the secret from Pro- 
metheus, but Prometheus refused to reveal what might enable his 
enemy Zeus to escape his doom. 

2 u Michael, of celestial armies prince," battles with Satan when he 
rebels against God in heaven. The story of the fearful contest is told 
to Adam by the angel Raphael in Paradise Lost, Book VI. Satan is 
beaten finally by the intervention of the Messiah armed with the 
thunders of Jehovah. 

3 See Paradise Lost, Book I. 

4 Egotist, one who is absorbed in himself. 



42 ESSAY ON MILTON 

their idiosyncracies l on their readers. They have nothing 
in common with those modern beggars for fame,, who ex- 
tort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced,, 
by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet 
it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have 
been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by 
their personal feelings. 

44. The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished 
by loftiness of thought ; that of Dante by intensity of feel- 
ing. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the 
asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. 
There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uni- 
formly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no 
fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of 
time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. 
It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the 
conflicts of earth, nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. 
It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own 
nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which 
the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible, even 
in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the 
Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and 
where the light was as darkness \"' 2 The gloom of his 
character discolours all the passions of men and all the 
face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the 
flowers of Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne ! 
All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No 
person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, 
the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful 
stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the 
lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too 
sensitive to be happy. 3 

1 Idiosyncracy, special peculiarity of temper or constitution. 

2 Job x. 22. 

3 The most famous picture of Dante is that attributed to his 



ESSAY ON MILTON 43 

45. Milton 1 was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover — 
and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and 
in loye. He had survived his health and his sight, the 
comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. 
Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at 
his entrance into life, some had been taken away from 
the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates 
their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some were pin- 
ing in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood 
on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just 
sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the 
style of a bellman, 2 were now the favourite writers of the 
sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd — 
which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the 
rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half 
human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and 
reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was 
placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, 
and serene — to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned . 
at, by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. 3 If ever 
despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it 
might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of 
his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, 
nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, 
nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic 

contemporary, Giotto, a fresco on a wall in the Bargello at Flor- 
ence. 

1 For Milton's story see the Introduction, 10-19. Paradise Lost was 
written chiefly, if not wholly, after the restoration of Charles II. to 
the throne in 1660. 

2 In the vociferous style of one who, like the old-fashioned bellman 
or town crier, forced the public to listen to what he said. 

3 Satyrs, in ancient classic myth, sylvan deities, becoming bestial in 
the fancies of the later ages. Goblins, knavish spirits of the mediaeval 
legends haunting woods and dark places. 



44 ESSAY ON MILTON 

patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but 
they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, 
perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings 
could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when, on 
the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in 
the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with liter- 
ary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it 
continued to be — when, after having experienced every 
calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sight- 
less, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die ! l 

46. Hence it was, that, though he wrote the Paradise 
Lost at a time of life 2 when images of beauty and tender- 
ness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds 
in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and dis- 
appointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and 
delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither 
Theocritus 3 nor Ariosto 4 had a finer or more healthful sense 
of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to 
luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of night- 

1 The contrasts in this paragraph are rather over-emphasized for 
rhetorical effect. The first period alluded to, the "eve of great 
events," is 1639. For the historical situation then, see Introduction, 
8. His "domestic afflictions" were the want of harmony existing 
between his first wife and himself, the many deaths in his immediate 
family, and the unfilial conduct of his daughters. Milton died in 
1674, not, however, in a "hovel," nor too poor to leave £1,500. Nor 
was he "disgraced." His last years, though poor, were not without 
comfort, happiness, and respect. See Introduction, 17. 

2 This poem was written in the years from 1658 to 1667. Milton 
would then be fifty to sixty years of age during its composition. He 
had planned it for many years before. 

3 Theocritus, the greatest and the first pastoral poet in the world, 
was a Sicilian Greek of the latter part of the third century B.C. An- 
drew Lang has made a beautiful English version of his idylls and 
poems describing country life and landscape. 

4 Ariosto, a great Italian poet (1474-1533), wrote Orlando Furioso 
and many lyric poems. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 45 

ingales, the juice of summer fruits,, and the coolness of 
shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry 
of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet 
affection of an English fireside. 1 His poetry reminds us of 
the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beauti- 
ful as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged and 
gigantic elevations. The roses and- myrtles bloom un- 
chilled on the verge of the avalanche. 

47. Traces indeed of the peculiar character of Milton 
may be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly dis- 
played in the sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been 
undervalued by critics who have not understood their nat- 
ure. They have no epigrammatic point. There is none 
of the ingenuity of Filicaja 2 in the thought, none of the 
hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They 
are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet ; 
as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would 
have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the city, 
a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown 
out against one of his books, a dream which for a short 
time restored to him that beautiful face 3 over which the 
grave had closed forever, led him to musings which, with- 
out effort, shaped themselves into verse. The unity of 
sentiment and severity of style which characterize these 

§§ 47-49. Sixth topic : The Sonnets. 

1 Read Matthew Arnold's judgment on this sentence, in his Essay on 
Milton See Suggestions for Teachers, iii., (1). 

2 Filicaja (1642-1707), an Italian poet and jurist, especially noted 
for his sonnets. Petrarch, the Italian scholar who is chiefly remem- 
bered for famous sonnets written in praise of his Laura. 

3 This refers to his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, who lived 
only fifteen months after their marriage. His dream of her is com- 
memorated in Sonnet XXII T. Milton was totally blind before their 
marriage ; very possibly he never saw her face, and Macaulay had per- 
haps forgotten too that her face is veiled in the sonnet. 



46 ESSAY ON MILTON 

little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, 1 or perhaps 
still more of the Collects, of the English Liturgy. The 
noble poem on the massacres of Piedmont is strictly a 
collect in verse. 2 

48. The sonnets are more or less striking, according as 
the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less 
interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dig- 
nified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we 
know not where to look for a parallel. 3 It would indeed 
be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the 
character of a writer, from passages directly egotistical. 
But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though 
perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works 
which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in 
every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, 
English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. 
V 49A His public conduct was such as was to be expected 
from a man of a spirit so high, and an intellect so powerful. 
He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of 
mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oro- 
masdes and Arimanes, 4 liberty and despotism, reason and 
prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single gene- 
y ration, for no single land. The destinies of the human 
race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the 

1 The Greek Anthology is a monster collection of short occasional 
poems, written through many centuries by many hands. 
a Sonnet XVIII. 

3 Milton published twenty-three sonnets. Some of them are in 
deed the most beautiful sonnets in English, if not in the world. See 
Wordsworth's Sonnet upon Milton. 

4 In the Zoroastrian religion there are two deities, Ahuro Mazdao 
and Angro Mainyusha, called here Oromasdes and Arimanes. The 
first is creator of light, life, good ; the second, of darkness, filth, death. 
Both are eternal, and they are eternally contending for the mastery of 
the universe. For objections to this comparison of Macaulay s, see 
Matthew Arnold, A French Critic on Milton. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 47 

English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty 
principles which have since worked their way into the 
depths of the American forests/ which have roused Greece 
from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 2 
and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have 
kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
and loosed the knees of the oppressors with a strange and 
unwonted fear. 

50. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant 
existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent liter- 
ary champion. We need not say how much we admire his 
public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves 
that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjus- 
tifiable. 3 The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, 
and is less understood, than any event in English his- 
tory. The friends of liberty laboured under the disadvan- 
tage of which the lion in the fable 4 complained so bitterly. 

1 Macaulay has in his mind the recent setting up of the South Amer- 
ican republics— Colombia (1819), Peru (1821), Mexico (1823), and 
others. They had been hitherto colonies of Spain. 

2 Greece had lost her independence by the conquest of the Romans, 
146 B.C. She won it again, in 1829 a.d. , from the Turks. The War 
of Grecian Independence (1821-1829) was going on while Macaulay 
was writing. For the movements of politics in Europe at the time 
when Macaulay wrote this essay, see Introduction, 8. 

3 The estimation in which Milton was held by Englishmen long de- 
pended on the critic's party politics. It still depended, in Macaulay's 
day, somewhat on the critic's political sympathies. As therefore Mil- 
ton's public conduct is always judged from the party standpoint, 
Macaulay labors to justify the action of the whole Roundhead party, 
Milton included. 

4 The fable is this A man and a lion, travelling through a forest, and 
boasting of their strength and prowess, came to a statue of a man 
strangling a lion, on which the man remarked, " See how strong we 
are, and how we can prevail over even the king of beasts." To this 
the lion replied, "Yes, but if the lions knew bow to erect statues, the 
man would have been under the lion's paw." 



48 ESSAY ON MILTON 

Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the 
painters. As a body, the Roundheads 1 had done their utmost 
to decry and ruin literature ; and literature was even with 
them, as, in the long run, it always is with its enemies. The 
best book on their side of the question is the charming nar- 
rative of Mrs. Hutchinson. 2 May's History of the Parlia- 
ment 3 is good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting 
crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish 
and violent ; and most of the later writers who have espoused 
the same cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine 
Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished 
by zeal than either by candour or by skill. 4 On the other 
side are the most authoritative and the most popular his- 
torical works in our language, that of Clarendon, 5 and that 
of Hume. 6 The former is not only ably written and full 
of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and 
sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with 
which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fasci- 
nating narrative the great mass of the reading public are 
still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so 
much that he hated liberty for having been allied with 

1 Puritans, so called in contempt, because they did not wear their 
hair in long " love locks " like the Cavaliers. 

2 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Llutcldnson by his Widow, Lucy. It 
is published in Bonn's Standard Library. It has also been edited by 
C. H. Firth. 

3 Breviary of the Parliament of England by Thomas May, Esq. , 
1650. 

4 Critical History of England, John Oldmixon ; Memoirs of General 
Ludlow, C. H. Firth ; History of England from the Accession of 
James I. to that of the House of Brunswick, by Catherine Macaulay. 

6 The History of the Rebellion, etc., begun in the year 1641, by Ed- 
ward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. An edition by W. D. Macray is pub- 
lished in the Clarendon Press Series. 

6 History of England from the Invasion of Julius Ccesar to the Revo- 
lution of 1688, by David Hume. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 49 

religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the 
dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality 
of a judge. 

51. The public conduct of Milton must be approved or ^ 
condemned, according as the resistance of the people to 
Charles I. shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We "/ 
shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages 
to the discussion of that interesting and most important 
question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We 
shall not recur to those primary principles from which the 
claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is 
to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage-ground ; 
but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confi- 
dent of superiority that we have no objection to imi- 
tate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights 
who vowed to joust 1 without helmet or shield against all 
enemies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun 
and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. ^-> 
We confidently affirm that every reason which can be urged 
in favour of the Eevolution of 1688 may be urged with at 
least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Ee- p 
bellion. 2 

§§ 49-88. Second Division of the Essay : Milton's conduct 
as a citizen. The conduct of his party associates, gg 49-72. 
First topic : Milton's joining the party of the Parliament in 1642. 
§§ 49-51. Under the impressions derived from seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth century literature, many Englishmen fail to see that the Long 
Parliament icas defending principles of government accepted by all 
England since 1688, and now struggling for recognition in the rest of the 
world. 

§§ 51-57. The rebellion of Parliament against Charles I. is therefore 
justified by a comparison, point by point, with the glorious Revolution 
dethroning James II. 

1 To take part in a military spectacle where knights attacked each 
other as if in warfare. 

2 For a brief review of all these events, see the Introduction, 13-16. 

4 



t 



50 ESSAY ON MILTON 

52. In one respect only, we think, can the warmest ad- 
mirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sov- 

.> ereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, 
a Papist ; we say in name and profession, because both 
Charles himself and his miserable creature Laud, 1 while 
they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all 
its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to author- 
ity, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish 
passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for a 
priestly character, and, above all, a stupid and ferocious 
intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede 
that Charles was a good Protestant ; but we say that his 
Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction 
between his case and that of James. 

53. The principles of the Revolution have often been 
grossly misrepresented. There is a certain class of men 2 
who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great 
names and great actions of former times, never look at 
them for any other purpose than in order to find in them 
some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable pre- 
cedent, they pass by what is essential, and take only what 
is accidental : they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and 
hold up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in 
any part of any great example, there be anything unsound, 
these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and 

1 William Laud (1573-1645), the celebrated Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and one of the foremost statesmen in the King's party. For a 
more judicial estimate of him than Macaulay's, see his Life by Hutton, 
in the Leaders of Religion Series (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895). 

2 Macaulay is here attacking his own political enemies. He was of 
those who were trying at this time to relieve their Catholic fellow- 
citizens in Great Britain of all political disabilities. This was accom- 
plished in 1829. Macaulay pauses here in the current of his essay 
to attack those hypocritical Protestants of his own day who pretended 
to cite the example of the great Whigs of 1688 to cover a bigoted 
hatred of Catholics in 1825, See Introduction, 8, 



ESSAY OJV MILTON 51 

dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end 
has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their 
prototype, that 

" Their labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil." 1 

54. To the blessings which England has derived from the 
Eevolution, these people are utterly insensible. The ex- 
pulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular 
rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing with 
them. One sect 2 there was which, from unfortunate tem- 
porary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close 
restraint. One part of the empire there was, so unhappily 
circumstanced that at that time its misery was necessary to 
our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom. These are 
the parts of the Eevolution which the politicians of whom 
we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them, 
not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate the 
good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of 
Spain, or of South America. They stand forth, zealots for 
the doctrine of Divine Eight which has now come back to 
us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of 
Legitimacy. 3 But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then 
William 4 is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are 
great men. 5 Then the Eevolution is a glorious era. The 

1 Paradise Lost, Book I., 164, 165. 

2 The Roman Catholics, especially in Ireland. See Introduction, 17. 

3 See Introduction, 8. 

4 William, Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. of England. 

5 John Somers (1652-1716) first became famous as counsel for the 
Seven Bishops ; he took a leading part in framing the great Declara- 
tion of Right ; under William he held high offices of state, especially 
those of Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. For his character 
see Macaulay's History, vol. vii., chap. xx. Charles, Earl of Shrews- 
bury (1660-1718), one of the seven Whigs who invited William to 
England; he afterwards helped to proclaim George I. His his- 



52 ESSAY ON MILTON 

very same persons who, in this country, never omit an 
opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite 1 slander 
respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed 
St. George's Channel 2 than they begin to fill their bumpers 
to the glorious and immortal memory. 3 They may truly 
boast that they look not at men but at measures. So that 
evil be done, they care not who does it ; the arbitrary 
Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, 
or Frederic the Protestant. 4 On such occasions their 
deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid con- 
struction. The bold assertions of these people have of late 
impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion 
that James the Second was expelled simply because he was 
a Catholic, and that the Ke volution was essentially a Prot- 
estant Revolution. 

55. But this certainly was not the case. Nor can any per- 
son who has acquired more knowledge of the history of 
those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridg- 
ment B believe that, if James had held his own religious 
opinions without wishing to make proselytes, 6 or if, wish- 

tory is very curious and characteristic of the time. See Macaulay's 
History, 

1 Jacobite, a supporter of the Stuarts. Jacobus, Latin for James, 
would be the king's name in Latin documents and on the coins of 
James II. 

2 St. George's Channel separates England and Ireland. 

3 The traditional toast of the Whigs: ''To the glorious and im- 
mortal memory of King William." 

4 Charles means, of course, the Stuart King. William is the Prince 
of Orange. But Macaulay means to taunt his own contemporaries, not 
only with their affected admiration for past heroes, but also for their 
actual sympathy with despots of the present. So the kings of Spain 
and of Prussia, named Ferdinand and Frederic, most unpopular in 
1825 in England, must be alluded to here. See Introduction, 8. 

5 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), author of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
wrote an abridged history of England. 

6 One who changes from one opinion or sect to another. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 53 

ing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with 
exerting only his constitutional influence for that purpose, 
the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. 
Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning ; and, 
if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily, not 
to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a 
tyrant because he was a Catholic ; but they excluded Cath- 
olics from the crown, because they thought them likely to 
be tyrants. The ground on which they, in their famous 
resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, " that 
James had broken the fundamental laws of the king- 
dom." 1 Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revo- 
lution of 1688, must hold that the breach of fundamental 
laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The 
question then is this : Had Charles the First broken the 
fundamental laws of England ? 

56. No person can answer in the negative, unless he re- 
fuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought 
against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of 
the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the King 
himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any v 
party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct 
of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long 
Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and 
treachery. 2 x Let those who applaud the Revolution andy 
condemn the Rebellion, mention one act of James the Sec- 
ond to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of 
his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in 

1 Resolution of Parliament in 1689 : " that King James, having en- 
deavored to subvert the Constitution of this kingdom by breaking the 
original contract between King and People, and by the advice of 
Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental 
laws and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdi- 
cated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant." 

2 See Introduction, 13. 



54 ESSAY ON MILTON 

the Declaration of Right/ presented by the two houses to 
William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to 
have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his 
own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, 
raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quar- 
tered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious 
. manner. JSTot a single session of parliament had passed 
without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of 
debate. The right of petition was grossly violated ; arbi- 
trary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted im- 
prisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. If these 
things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason ; 
if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. 2 

57. But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? 
Why, after the king had consented to so many reforms, 
and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, 3 did the 
parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk 
of civil war ? The ship money 4 had been given up. The 
Star Chamber 5 had been abolished. Provision had been 
made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation 
of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good, 
by peaceable and regular means ? We recur again to the 

§§57-72. Admitting, then, the justice of Parliament's quarrel with 
the king, was their rebellion too strong a measure? When are revolutions 
justified f 

1 Declaration of Right presented by the two Houses to William and 
Mary, February, 1689, on the occasion of Parliament's declaring them 
to be King and Queen of England. See Introduction, 17. 

2 See Introduction, 13. 

3 Prerogatives, privileges sovereign and exclusive, subject to no 
restriction or interference, belonging specially to the king. See Intro- 
duction, 13. 

4 Ship money. See Introduction, 13. 

5 A peculiar court of Charles I. It had been developed from a 
sort of committee of the king's council, originating under the Tudor 
monarchy. See Introduction, 13. 



ESS AY ON MILTON 55 

analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from 
the throne ? Why was he not retained upon conditions ? 
He, too, had offered to call a free parliament, and to sub- 
mit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in 
the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolu- 
tion, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty 
years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a 
national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and 
proved tyrant. 1 The Long Parliament acted on the same 
principle, and is entitled to the same praise. They could not 
trust the king. He had, no doubt, passed salutary laws. 
But what assurance had they that he would not break 
them ? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives. But 
where was the security that he would not resume them ? 
They had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a 
man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a 
man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned, and 
never redeemed. 

58. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still 
stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of 
James can be compared, for wickedness and impudence, to 
the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Eight. 2 
The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which 
the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He 
hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to give his assent 

1 See Introduction, 17. In fact from 1668 to 1748 the disputes over 
the English succession were incessant. It involved England in quar- 
rels with the French King, and furnished pretexts for constant 
quarrels at home. As to the dynasty, William was a stranger in Eng- 
land to the end of his life, and the first two Georges never spoke 
English well, and preferred Hanover as a residence. The national 
debt was created by Montague's borrowing on bonds at 10 per cent, for 
the expenses of William's government in 1692. It may therefore be 
said to be due to the Revolution. 

2 Presented in 1628 to Charles I. by his third parliament. It forbade 
taxation without consent of a parliament. See Introduction, IB. 



56 ESSAY ON MILTON 

for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent. 
The subsidies are voted. But no sooner is the tyrant re- 
lieved , than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures 
which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all 
the clauses of the very Act which he had been paid to pass. 

59. For more than ten years the people had seen the 
rights, which were theirs by a double claim, by immemo- 
rial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the 
perfidious king who had recognized them. At length cir- 
cumstances compelled Charles to summon another parli- 
ament : another chance was given to our fathers : were 
they to throw it away*as they had thrown away the former? 
Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le veut ? * Were 
they again to advance their money on pledges which had 
been forfeited over and over again ? Were they to lay a 
second petition of right at the foot of the throne, to grant 
another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning 
ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten 
years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should 
again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury ? 
They were compelled to choose whether they would trust 
a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely 
and nobly. 

60. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other 
malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is pro- 
duced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, 
and content themselves with calling testimony to character. 
He had so many private virtues ! And had James the Sec- 
ond no private virtues ? Was even Oliver Cromwell, 2 his 

1 " The king wills it." This is the form of consent by which an Act 
of Parliament is accepted by the monarch and made law at the present 
day. It comes down from the time when French was the language of 
the Kings of England. 

2 The character of Oliver Cromwell is not even yet properly esti- 
mated. Since Macaulay wrote, however, the drift of opinion has grown 



ESSAY ON MILTON 57 

bitterest .enemies themselves being judges, destitute of pri- 
vate virtues ? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed 
to Charles ? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of 
his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of 
the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones 
in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good 
father ! A good husband ! Ample apologies indeed for 
fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood. 

61. We charge him with having broken his coronation 
oath ; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow ! We 
accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless 
inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of pre- 
lates ; and the defence is, that ho took his little son on his 
knee and kissed him ! We censure him for having vio- 
lated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, 
for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe 
them ; and we are informed, that he was accustomed to 
hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to such 
considerations as these, together with his Vandyke 1 dress, 
his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we 
verily believe, most of his popularity with the present gen- 
eration. 

more and more favorable even among those who may consider them- 
selves his political opponents. The curious may read Carlyle's great 
Life of Cromwell and Gardiner's recently published volumes on the 
Commonwealth in his great series on the history of England. See, 
for a good short history, Frederic Harrison's Oliver Cromwell (Mac- 
millan, 1888). 

1 Named from Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), the great Flemish 
portrait-painter. He was knighted and made court painter by Charles 
I. , who sat tq him many times. King Charles may be said to be known 
to posterity exclusively by these pictures, which kt once seen are im- 
possible to forget." He painted also a famous picture of the children 
of Charles I. The beautiful ''Vandyke dress" appears in most of 
these portraits ; it is specially characterized by the collar and trimmings 
of lace. 



58 ESSAY ON MILTON 

62. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the 
common phrase, a good man but a bad king. We can as 
easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a 
good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in esti- 
mating the character of an individual, leave out of our con- 
sideration his conduct in the most important of all human 
relations. And if, in that relation, we find him to have 
been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty 
to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at 
table, and all his regularity at chapel. 

63. AVe cannot refrain from adding a few words respect- 
ing a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of 
dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at 
least governed them after the example of his predeces- 
sors. If he violated their privileges, it was because those 
privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of op- 
pression has ever been imputed to him, which has not a 
parallel in the annals of the Tudors. 1 This point Hume 
has laboured, with an art which is as discreditable in a his- 
torical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. 
The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had as- 
sented to the Petition of Eight. He had renounced the 
oppressive powers said to have been exercised by his prede- 
cessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was 
not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own 
recent release. 

64. These arguments are so obvious that it may seem 
superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have 
observed how much the events of that time are misrepre- 
sented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating 
the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest state- 
ment is the strongest. 

1 The house of Tudor (Henry VII. , Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary 
and Elizabeth) was named from Owen Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 
father of Henry VII. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 59 

65. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose 
to take issue on the great points of the question. They con- 
tent themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies 
to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They 
bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. 1 They execrate the 
lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural 
names of the preachers. 2 Major-generals fleecing their dis- 
tricts ; soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peas- 
antry ; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking 
possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of 
the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful windows of 
cathedrals ; Quakers 3 riding naked through the market- 
place ; Fifth-monarchy-men shouting for King Jesus 4 ; 
agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of 
Agag 5 — all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the 
Great Eebellion. 

66.. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. 
These charges, were they infinitely more important, would 
not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us 

1 Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, the adviser of Charles I. See 
Introduction, 13. He was '* attainted," that is condemned to death for 
high treason by a bill in Parliament, instead of by regular legal pro- 
ceedings before a court, and executed in 1641. 

2 For the Puritan and his ways, see Macaulay, History of England, 
vol. i. , chap. 1. 

3 George Fox first preached "the breaking forth of God's power'' in 
1648. His disciples were identified with many extravagances of the 
time, some of them making violent appeals to the emotions of the 
multitude. The extraordinary excesses here alluded to were in- 
tended by these Quaker prophets as an imitation of the symbolical 
actions of the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah xx. 2. The " Quakers " had 
no regular organization as a sect before 1666. 

4 Fifth-monarchy-men (1657), believing in the immediate coming of 
Christ, and also that it was their duty to inaugurate his kingdom by 
force. The other four monarchies alluded to were Assyria, Persia, 
Greece, Rome. 

5 1 Samuel xv. 32. 



60 ESSAY ON MILTON 

to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic scep- 
tres. 1 Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil 
war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the ac- 
quisition been worth the sacrifice ? It is the nature of the 
Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. 
Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than 
the struggles of the tremendous exorcism ? 2 

67. If it were possible that a people brought up under 
an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that sys- 
tem without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections 
to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that 
case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces 
no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral charac- 
ter of a people. We deplore the outrages which accom- 
pany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the 
more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The 
violence of those outrages, will always be proportioned to 
the ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity 
and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the 
oppression and degradation under which they have been 
accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The 
heads of the church and state reaped only that which they 
had sown. The government had prohibited free discus- 
sion : it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted 
with their duties and their rights. The retribution was 
just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ig- 
norance, it was because they had themselves taken away 
the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind 
fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind sub- 
mission. 

1 In the first publication of this essay Macaulay wrote " the sceptres 
of Brandenburgh and Braganza," i.e., Prussia and Portugal, referring 
especially to the " despots" of his own day, as above noted. 

9 The process of expelling evil spirits by religious or magical cere- 
monies. 



ESSAY OJST MILTON 61 

68. It is the character of such revolutions that we al- 
ways see the worst of them at first. Till men have been 
for some time free, they know not how to use their free- 
dom. The natives of wine countries are always sober. In 
climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A 
newly liberated people may be compared to a northern 
army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. 1 It is said 
that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves 
able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expen- 
sive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, 
however, plenty teaches discretion ; and after wine has 
been for a few months their daily fare, they become more 
temperate than they had ever been in their own country. 
In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of lib- 
erty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate 
effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skep- 
ticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the 
most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies 
love to exhibit it. They pull clown the scaffolding from 
the half -finished edifice : they point to the flying dust, the 
falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregu- 
larity of the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn 
where the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. 
If such miserable sophisms 2 were to prevail, there would 
never be a good house or a good government in the world. 

69. Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, 3 who, by some 
mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear, at 
certain seasons, in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. 
Those wlio injured her during the period of her disguise 

1 The Rhine country in. Germany is full of vineyards where Hock 
and Moselle wines are made. Xeres, or Jerez de la Frontera, is not a 
river but a town in Andalusia, near Cadiz, in Spain, where Sherry 
wine was first made and named. 

2 A false argument devised to show ingenuity or to deceive. 

3 See Orlando Furioso, Canto XLIII. 



62 ESSAY ON MILTON 

were forever excluded from participation in the blessings 
which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her 
loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards 
revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which 
was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all 
their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them 
happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Lib- 
erty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who 
in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are 
those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded 
and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in 
the time of her beauty and her glory ! 

70. There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. 
When a prisoner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the 
light of day : he is unable to discriminate colours or to 
recognize faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him 
into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the 
sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle 
and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the 
house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will 
soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to 
reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hos- 
tile theories correct each other. The scattered elements 
of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce. And at 
length a system of justice and order is educed out of the 
chaos. 

71. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of lay- 
ing it down as a self-evident proposition that no people 
ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The 
maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved 
not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If 
men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good 
in slavery, chey may indeed wait forever. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 63 

,72. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the con- V 
duct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in 
spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the con- 
duct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of Public / 
Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged 
with personal participation in any of the blameable excesses 
of that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line 
of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of 
the King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means 
approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many emi- 
nent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more par- 
ticularly to the eminent person who defended it, that 
nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which, 
for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the 
fashion to cast upon the Kegicides. 1 We have throughout 
abstained from appealing to first principles. We will not 
appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case 
of the Kevolution. What essential distinction can be 
drawn between the execution of the father and the deposi- 
tion of the son ? What constitutional maxim is there 
which applies to the former and not to the latter ? The 
king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as 
Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be 
responsible for the acts of the Sovereign. If so, why not 
impeach Jeffreys 2 and retain James ? The person of a 
King is sacred. Was the person of James considered 

§§ 72-78. Second topic : Milton's association tcith the Regicides and 
Cromwell. §§ 72-75. The execution of Charles not so very different a 
measure from the deposition of James. But even if one disapproves of 
the regicide, one may admit the necessity of defending it at that time. 

Commonly, the members of the High Court of Justice, who sen 
tenced Charles I. Also, as an abstract noun in the singular, regicide 
is the act of killing a king. 

2 The wicked Chief Justice (1G48-1689), minister, and adviser of 
James II., notorious for flagrant injustice and brutality on the bench. 
See Macaulay's History, Vols. II., III. 



64 ESSAY ON MILTON 

sacred at the Boyne ? l To discharge cannon against an 
army in which a King is known to be posted, is to approach 
pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always be 
remembered, was put to death by men who had been exas- 
perated by the hostilities of several years, and who had 
never been bound to him by any other tie than that which 
was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those 
who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, 
who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his 
palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon 
his various slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued 
him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to 
another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and 
attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two 
daughters ! 2 When we reflect on all these things, we are 
at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the 
fifth of November, 3 thank God for wonderfully conducting 

1 The battle of the Boyne, a river in the north of Ireland, fought 
July 1st, 1690, between the Dutch and English troops, under King 
William, and the English, French, and Irish, under King James See 
Gardiner's Student's History of England. 

2 William, Prince of Orange, who headed the attack on the King, was 
the son of Mary, sister of James II., and thus his nephew. Mary, 
William's wife, and Anne, his successor, were daughters of James II. 
by Anne Hyde. The kt innocent heir" of James II. was his son by 
Mary of Este, his wife. This heir, after James's death, was called 
James III. by the Jacobites, and the " Old Pretender" by the parti- 
sans of the House of Hanover. 

3 The English Prayer Book, when Macaulay wrote, contained a 
" Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving" for use on November fifth, cele- 
brating the delivery of England from " Popish Tyranny and Arbitrary 
Power." It was the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder 
Plot and also of the arrival of William in England. The thirtieth 
day of January was kept as a il Day of Prayer and Fasting for the 
Martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles the First." Both these ser- 
vices were taken out of the Prayer Book by Royal Warrant of Queen 
Victoria in 1859. From these services Macaulay is quoting. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 65 

his servant, William, and for making all opposition fall 
before him until he became our King and Governor, can 
on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that 
the blood of the Eoyal Martyr may be visited on them- 
selves and their children. 

73. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of 
Charles ; not because the constitution exempts the King 
from responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, 
however excellent, have their exceptions ; nor because we 
feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think 
that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as " a 
tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy ; " but 
because we are convinced that the measure was most in- 
jurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed 
was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom the alle- 
giance of every Koyalist was instantly transferred, was at 
large. The Presbyterians 1 could never have been perfectly 
reconciled to the father : they had no such rooted enmity 
to the son. The great body of the people, also, contem- 
plated that proceeding with feelings which, however un- 
reasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage. 

74. But, though we think the conduct of the Eegicides 
blameable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different 
light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The 
evil was incurred ; and the object was to render it as small 
as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not 
yielding to the popular opinion ; but we cannot censure 
Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feel- 
ing which would have restrained us from committing the 
act would have led us, after it had been committed, to de- 

1 Those who desired to introduce into England church government 
by bodies of Elders or Presbyters instead of by Bishops, After 
Charles's death this party did support Charles II. , as they feared and 
disliked the religious theories of the Independents of the Army more 
than they feared royal tyranny. 
5 



66 ESSAY ON MILTON 

fend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. 
For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had 
not been done, -while the people disapproved of it. But, 
for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished 
the people to approve of it when it was done. If anything 
more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of 
Salmasius ] would furnish it. That miserable performance 
is now with justice considered only as a beacon to word- 
catchers who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of 
the man who refuted it, the "iEnese magni dextra," 2 gives 
it all its fame with the present generation. In that age 
the state of things was different. It was not then fully 
understood how vast an interval separates the mere classi- 
cal scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be 
doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of so 
eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles of 
all free governments, must, if suffered to remain unan- 
swered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the pub- 
lic mind. 

75. We wish to add a few words relative to another sub- 
ject on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, 
his conduct during the administration of the Protector. 3 
That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office 
under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, 
extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the 

§§ 75-78. Discussion of GromweWs good government compared with 
Parliament's betrayal of trust on one side and Stuart misgovemment 
on the other. 

1 Claudius Salmasius (1588-1653), the most famous scholar of Mil- 
ton's day, professor at the University of Leyden. For this pamphlet 
controversy over the execution of Charles between Milton and Sal- 
masius, see the Introduction, 16. 

2 " Thou fallest by the right hand of great ^neas," a line from 
Virgil's JEneid (X. , 830). This now proverbial phrase describes the 
death of a person wholly unknown falling by the sword of a great hero. 

3 For the Protectorate, see the Introduction, 16. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 67 

country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambi- 
tion of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to 
have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely 
and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, 
till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it 
was not till he found that the few members who remained 
after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were de- 
sirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held 
only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a 
Venetian oligarchy. 1 ! But even when thus placed by vio- 
lence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited 
power. He gave the country a constitution far more per- 
fect than any which had at that time been known in the 
world. 2 He reformed the representative system in a man- 
ner that has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. 
For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the com- 
monwealth ; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a 
Dutch stadtholder, 3 or an American President. He gave 
the Parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and 
left to it the whole legislative authority — not even reserv- 
ing to himself a veto on its enactments ; and he did not 
require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his 
family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the 
time, and the opportunities which he had of aggrandising 

1 " Not a dog barked at their going," said Cromwell afterwards. An 
oligarchy is the government of a state by a few of its citizens. Venice 
was always called a republic, because it was not governed by one king 
or other monarch. But its government shrunk slowly from govern- 
ment by general meetings of citizens into an oligarchy governed by 
Councils (Great Council, Small Council, Council of Ten), and at last 
supreme power fell into the hands of only Three. 

2 The " Instrument of Government," the first and last time England 
ever had a written constitution. See the Introduction, 16. 

3 The chief magistrate of the Dutch Republic. The word "stat- 
houder " originally meant "governor of a province," "stead-holder," 
or lieutenant. But it came to mean the chief magistrate of the 
United Provinces. 



68 ESSAY ON MILTON 

himself, be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison 
with Washington or Bolivar. 1 Had his moderation been 
met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to 
think that he would have overstepped the line which he had 
traced for himself. But when he found that his parlia- 
ments questioned the authority under which they met, 
and that he was in danger of being deprived of the re- 
stricted power which was absolutely necessary to his per- 
sonal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a 
more arbitrary policy. 

76. Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Crom-, 
well were at first honest, though we believe that he was 
driven from the noble course which he had marked out for 
himself, by the almost irresistible force of circumstances ; 
though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, 
the ability and energy of his splendid administration, 
we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even 
in his hands. We know that a good constitution is in- 
finitely better than the best despot. But we suspect that, 
at the time of which we speak, the violence of religious 
and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settle- 
ment next to impossible. The choice lay, not between 
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the 
Stuarts. 2 That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who 
fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those 
of the thirty years which succeeded it, 3 the darkest and 

1 Bolivar (1783-1830), the " Liberator," who emancipated the col- 
onies of Spain, and created the great republic of Bolivia in South 
America, which, however, fell to pieces after his death into several 
states. He was a popular hero to young Liberals of this time. See 
Introduction, 8. 

2 The Stuarts, James I., Charles L, Charles II. , James II., sat on 
the English throne from 1603-1688 For their general history, see 
Macaulay's History of England. 

3 1660-1688, the reigns of Charles II. and James II., often called 
the ''Restoration." 



ESSAY ON MILTON 69 

most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was 
evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the 
foundations of an admirable system. Never before had 
religious liberty and freedom of discussion been enjoyed 
in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been 
better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at 
home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which 
stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of 
the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions 
which he had established, as set down in the Instrument 
of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, 1 
were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed 
from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived 
a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would 
have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would 
have died with him. His power had not been consecrated 
by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great 
personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded 
from a second protector, unless he were also a second 
Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease 
are the most complete vindication of those who exert- 
ed themselves to uphold his authority. His death dis- 
solved the whole frame of society. The army rose against 
the parliament, the different corps of the army against 
each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted 
against party. The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to 
be revenged on the Independents, 2 sacrificed their own 
liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without 
casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipula- 



1 See Introduction, 16. 

2 The Independents were distinguished from the Presbyterians in 
that they desired no general church government in the nation, but 
that each congregation of worshippers should be independent of every 
other. 



70 ESSAY ON MILTON 

tion for the future, they threw down their freedom at the 
feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 1 

77. Then came those days, never to be recalled without 
a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty, and sen- 
suality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, 
the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden 
age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King 
cringed to his rival 2 that he might trample on his people, 
sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with com- 
placent infamy, her degrading insults and her more de- 
grading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buf- 
foons, regulated the policy of the state. The government 
had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough 
to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of 
every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha 3 
of every fawning dean. 4 In every high place, worship 
was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch, 5 and 
England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with 



1 But Charles II. was not known to be a u frivolous and heartless 
tyrant." He was only thirty years old at that time, and might be 
supposed to have learned something from his father's fate. This 
part of the essay, as well as the next few paragraphs, is rather too 
strongly stated by Macaulay. Bead Matthew Arnold, A French Critic 
on Milton. 

2 Louis XIV. of France. 

3 1 Corinthians xvi. 22. Anathema, anything devoted to evil, " an 
accursed thing." Maranatha, "The Lord hath come,'' means only 
" Amen ! " 

4 A dean in England is the Lead of the corporation of a Cathedral. 
The place is very honorable and has been held by the best of the 
English clergy. The word is used here by Macaulay to stand for the 
upper clergy in general of these reigns. 

5 The allusion here is to the two fiends in Paradise Lost ; Belial 
(Book II., verse 108), the graceful and humane but false and hollow 
angel, is of course Charles II.; Moloch (Book II., verse 43), the cruel, 
is King James II. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 71 . 

the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime suc- 
ceeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race ac- 
cursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to 
wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by- word and 
a shaking of the head to the nations. 

78. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made 
on the public character of Milton apply to him only as 
one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of 
the peculiarities which distinguished him from his con- 
temporaries. And*, for that purpose, it is necessary to take 
a short survey of the parties into which the political world 
was at that time divided. We must premise that our ob- 
servations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, 
from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. At 
a period of public commotion, every faction, like an Orien- 
tal army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless 
.and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in 
the hope of picking up something under its protection, 
but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exter- 
minate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which 
we are treating, abounded with such fickle and selfish poli- 
ticians, who transferred their support to every government 
as it rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, 1 and 
spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when 

§§ 78-87. Third topic : Milton's contemporaries classified and de- 
scribed. -§§ 79-84. The Puritans. 

1 The Long Parliament assembled in 1640; the king was executed in 
1649. Cromwell was inaugurated " Lord Protector" in 1653; his 
body was disinterred and treated with indignity in 1661. Calves' 
heads were set on the table by the fiercer rebels to commemorate the 
beheading of the king. In the festivities celebrating the return of 
Charles II. in 1660 broiled rumps were cooked and eaten in the streets 
of London to ridicule the "rump" Parliament. In the flight of 
Charles II. , after his defeat at Worcester, he was said to have found a 
hiding-place in an oak tree. The oak was the Royalist symbol there- 
after. 



72 ESSAY ON MILTON 

Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when 
he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn ; who dined on 
calves' heads or on broiled rumps, and cut down oak- 
branches or stuck them up, as circumstances altered, with- 
out the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave 
out of the account. We take our estimate of parties from 
those who really deserved to be called partisans. 
V 79. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most re- 
markable body of mem, perhaps, which the world has ever 
)( produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their char- 
acter lie on the surface. He that runs may read them ; nor 
have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers 
to point them out. For many years after the Kestoration, 
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. 
They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the 
press and the stage, at the time when the press and stage 
were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they 
were as a body unpopular ; they could not defend them- 
selves ; and the public would not take them under its pro- 
tection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 1 The 
ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases, which they 
introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human 
learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were in- 
deed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the 
laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be 
learnt. And he who approaches this subject should care- 
fully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
which has already misled so many excellent writers. 2 

1 For example, Butler's Htidibras. 

2 Such as Scott's Woodstock and Peveril of the Peak, which are a 
good deal affected by this view of the Puritans. Scott represents the 
current opinion of Macaulay's Tory contemporaries. 



ESSAY ON MILTON . 73 

u Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se coiitiene : 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 1 

80. Those who roused the people to resistance, who l— 
directed their measures through a long series of eventful 
years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, 
the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled 
down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short 
intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name 
of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, 
were no vulgar fanatics. 2 Most of their absurdities were ^ 
mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the 
dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not 
more attractive. We regret that a body, to whose courage 
and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had 
not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the ad- 
herents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for 
which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. 
But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio 
in the play, turn from the specious caskets, which contain 
only the Death's head and the Pool's head, and fix our 
choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treas- 
ure. 3 

1 " This is the source of laughter and this the stream 
Which contains mortal perils in itself : 
Now here to hold in check our desire, 
And to be very cautious, becomes us." 

See Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, XV., 57ff. In the island of the 
witch Armida, two knights find the river of Laughter. Their guide 
warns them in these words. 

2 Oliver Cromwell's strong policy made England a menace to her 
opponents and a power of the first rank on the Continent, whereas 
under Charles II. and James II. she dropped into a second-rate power. 

3 The well-known story in the Merchant of Venice, 



74 ESSAY ON MILTON 

81. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowl- 
edging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they 
habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great 
Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose 
inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to 
serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of 
existence. 1 They rejected with contempt the ceremonious 
homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship 
Vof the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full 
on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him 
face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terres- 
trial distinctions. The difference between the greatest 
and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared 
with the boundless interval which separated the whole race 
from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 
They recognized no title to superiority but his favour ; and, 
confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplish- 
ments and all the dignities of the world. If they were 
unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, 
they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 
names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt 
assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If 
their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over 
them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; 
their diadems, crowns of glory which shall never fade 
away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and 
priests, they looked down with contempt : for they es- 
teemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and 

1 An allusion to the first question and answer in the Westminster 
Catechism : " What is the chief end of man ? To glorify God and to 
enjoy him forever." 



ESSAY ON MILTON 75 

# 
eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right 

of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a 
mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being 
to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, 
on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, be- 
fore heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which 
should continue when heaven and earth should have passed 
away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to 
earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his 
sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For 
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen 
of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. 1 He had 
been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no 
common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no 
vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks 
had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had 
shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 

82. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, / 
the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; 
the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated 
himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot 
on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. 2 He was 
half -maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard 
the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He 

1 Evangelists are supposed to write, as historians, with pens ; but 
according to classic tradition, oracles and prophets are supposed to 
speak in song, to musical accompaniment. The Psalms and the 
Prophecy of the Hebrew Scriptures are of the nature of poetry and 
therefore are sung to the harp. 

2 This exalted temper appears in the letters and biographies of 
many Puritans. See for example Bunyan's Life, and the Pilgrim's 
Progress. 






76 ESSAY ON MILTON 

caught a gleam of v the Beatific Vision/ or woke screaming 
from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, 2 he thought 
himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. 
Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 
God had hid his face from him. 3 But when he took his 
seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace 
behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but 
their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but 
their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at 
them. But those had little reason to laugh who encoun- 
tered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. 4 
These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a cool- 
ness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 

1 The Visio beatified of the school-men, the philosophers of the Mid- 
dle Ages, meaning the direct sight of God himself which makes the 
happiness of the blessed. See Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII. See 
also Paradise Lost, Book I., v. 613. The idea is drawn from one 
of Jesus' beatitudes, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." 

2 Sir Harry Vane (1612-1662), Puritan and mystic, was a republi- 
can by conviction and therefore leader of the theoretic republicans 
in Parliament against the protectorate of Cromwell. Cromwell him- 
self, in the act of expelling the Parliament in 1653, uttered the historic 
exclamation, " The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Vane 
was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636-7, where he illus- 
trated his impracticable idealism in the controversy with Winthrop 
and the clergy over the matter of Anne Hutchinson. He was executed 
by Charles II. as a regicide in 1662. 

3 Fleetwood, one of the officers of the army, married Cromwell's 
daughter. For this story of his weakness and religious mania when 
called upon to control the army after Cromwell's death, see Claren- 
don's History (XVI. , 108). "God had spit in his face" were the wild 
words Fleetwood used. 

4 The "New Model Army " of 1646 was formed by Cromwell of re- 
ligious volunteers, chiefly drawn from the Independents. It was 
never defeated. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 77 

zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 
tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had 
subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. 
Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They 
had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their 
sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm 
had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every 
vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the 
influence of danger and corruption. It sometimes might 
lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose un- 
wise means. They went through the world like Sir Arte- 
gal's iron man Talus 1 with his flail, crushing and tramp- 
ling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but 
having neither part nor lot in human infirmities ; insensi- 
ble to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced 
by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. 

83. Such we believe to have been the character of the 
Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We 
dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We 
acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured 
by straining after things too high for mortal reach : and we 
know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often 
fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and 
extravagant austerity ; that they had their anchorites 2 and 
their crusades, 3 their Dunstans and their De Montforts, 
their Dominies and their Escobars. 4 Yet, when all cir- 

1 Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book V. 

2 Anchorite, a Greek word meaning one who has retired from the 
world, a hermit. 

3 The wars waged in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries 
by the European Christians under the badge of the cross, to rescue 
the holy places of Palestine from the possession of Mohammedans. 
The word is now used of any warfare with a religious or even with any 
high moral purpose. 

4 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (959 A.D.), generally famous for 



78 ESSAY ON MILTON 

cumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesi- 
tate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a 
useful body. 
V 84. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly 
because it was the cause of religion. There was another 
party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learn- 
ing and ability, which co-operated with them on very dif- 
ferent principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell 
was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in 
the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or care- 
less Gallios x with regard to religious subjects, but passion- 
f( ate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of 
ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, 
and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch 2 as 
their examples. They seem to have borne some resem- 
blance to the Brissotines 3 of the French ^Revolution. But 

his ruthlessness in putting Lis king, Edgar, under the power of the 
church. De Montfort was famous for the fierce cruelty with which 
he put down the religious heresy of the Albigenses in Provence in 1208. 
This is not Simon de Montfort, the great English earl. Dominic (1170- 
1221), a Spaniard who founded the great Dominican order of monks, 
famed for their vigor in pursuit of heresy, and as preachers and 
teachers. Escobar (1589-1669), a Spanish Jesuit, a writer on morals, 
celebrated for his alleged doctrine that purity of intention justifies 
actions in themselves wrong. 
§84. The Heathens. 

1 See Matthew Arnold's essay on Lord Falkland. For Thomas the 
Doubter read St. John xx. 24 ; for Gallio, Acts xviii. 17. 

2 Plutarch (46 A. D.), author of a work containing parallel lives of 
forty-six Greeks and Romans, grouped in pairs. The inspiring tone 
of these famous biographies and the abundance of maxims and exam- 
ples of lofty political conduct contained therein, have made Plutarch 
stimulating to the patriotism of young men of the poetic type in many 
great crises of the modern world's history. " Plutarch's men" is a 
by- word for the greatest men of antiquity. The best translation is 
North's (Tudor Translations : David Nutt). 

3 Brissotines, or Girondists, the moderate republicans who were 



ESSAY ON MILTON 79 

it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between 
them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner 
they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and some- 
times, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. 

85. We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt 
to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon a whole 
party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gam- 
blers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder 
attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars x to the standard 
of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses 
which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary 
armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favour- 
able specimen. Thinking, as we do, that the cause of the V^* 
King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot 
refrain from looking with complacency on the character of 
the honest old Cavaliers. 2 We feel a national pride inv/ 
comparing them with the instruments which the despots' 
of other countries are compelled to employ, with the 
mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janissa- 
ries 3 who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist 
countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing 

overthrown by the Jacobins of the u Mountain " in the National con- 
vention. Their chiefs were executed in the Reign of Terror of 1793. 
§ 85. The Royalists. 

1 Whitefriars, a district in London, named from the monastery es- 
tablished there in 1241. This district had certain privileges defend- 
ing its residents against arrest by any law-officers until Charles II. 
abolished them. See Scott's Fortunes of Nigel for a picture of the in- 
habitants of Whitefriars in the reign of James I. 

2 Cavaliers, the party of Charles I. 

3 Janissaries, a Turkish word meaning "New Troops, 11 a body of 
Turkish infantry, the Sultan's guard, originally composed of children 
kidnapped from Christian parents. This famous guard, becoming too 
powerful for the Sultan to control, was abolished in 1826 after a 
frightful conflict and massacre. 



80 ESSAY ON MILTON 

at every step,, and simpering at every word. They were 
not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, 
caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, defending without 

Move, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in 
their subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. 
The sentiment of individual independence was strong 

% within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or 
selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the 
prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of his- 
tory, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa ; 1 
and like the Ked- Cross Knight, they thought that they 
were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they de- 
fended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth they 
scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political ques- 

ytion. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant 
church that they fought ; but for the old banner which 
had waved in so many battles over the heads of their 
fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the 

y4iands of their brides. Though nothing could be more 
erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in 
a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities 
which are the grace of private life. With many of the 
vices of the Bound Table 2 they had also many of its vir- 

1 Faerie Queene, Book I. In Spenser's allegory Duessa typifies False- 
hood. There is a reference in this allegory to Mary of Scotland, one 
of whose extraordinary gifts it was to win the loyal attachment of all 
who saw her, while on the other hand she brought into shame and 
dishonor all who devoted themselves to her service. 

2 Allusion to King Arthur of Britain and his Round Table of cham- 
pions. See Tennyson's Idylls of the King for modern versions of these 
old romances, and, for careful study, The Legends of King Arthur and 
his Knights of the Round Table, by J. T. Knowles (F. Warne & Co. , 1895). 
In the legend Merlin, the enchanter, made the Round Table, at which 
were held the solemn feasts of Arthur's band of knights. The Ro- 
mances of the Round Table reflect the customs and character of the 
times during which they were composed. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 81 

tues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness and re- 
spect for women. They had far more both of profound 
and polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners 
were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their 
tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful. 

86. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes *S 
which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not 
a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the 
noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmo- 
nious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, 
from the conventicle 1 and from the Gothic 2 cloister, 3 from 
the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and 
from the Christmas 4 revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his 
nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and 
good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredi- 
ents by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the v j> 
Puritans, he lived 

" As ever in his great task-master's eye." 5 

§ 86. Milton's own character composed of many different strains. 

1 Conventicle, a place of meeting, secret or unauthorized, for relig- 
ious worship. In England it was specially used of the meetings of 
Dissenters. 

2 Gothic, the name of a form of architecture characterized by pointed 
arches and clustered columns, which belongs especially to mediaeval 
churches and abbeys. 

3 Cloister, a place of monastic retirement. 

4 The keeping of Christmas was made almost a party badge by 
the Royalists. Christmas was made a fast by Parliament in Decem- 
ber, 1644. See Butler, in Hudibras : 

"Rather than fail they will defy, 
That which they love most tenderly ; 
Quarrel with Mince-pies and disparage - 
Their best and dearest friend, Plum porridge, 
Fat pig and goose itself oppose, 
And blaspheme Custard through the nose." 

5 Sonnet VII 

6 



82 ESSAY OiY MILTON 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their 
fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 
not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more 
perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, 
their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, 1 their scorn 
^ of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny 
with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable 
and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely 
monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none 
who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer 
relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous 
delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were 
democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as har- 
V Y monise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under 
the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers 
were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and 
not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the 
'^pleasures of fascination ; but he was not fascinated. 2 He 
4 listened to the song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by with- 
out being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup 
of Oirce ; but he bore about him a sure antidote against 
the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which 
captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning 

1 Jargon, confused,^anintelligible talk. This refers to their peculiar 
diction, drawn so largely from misapplied phrases of the Old Testa- 
ment of the English Bible. Macaulaj has described this peculiarity 
above. Read some of Cromwell's letters for specimens. 

- Ulysses, who, having had himself lashed to the mast of his ship, 
sailing by, heard the Sirens singing without the danger of being at- 
tracted to them. Circe, the enchantress, offered to all who entered 
her magic palace a cup to drink which changed them to beasts. 
Ulysses was previously provided with a more powerful magical herb, 
which secured its possessor against this disaster. He was untouched 
by the spell. The stories are in Homer's Odyssey, Books X. and XII, 



ESSAY ON MILTON 83 

powers. The statesman was proof against the splendour, 
the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. 
Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in 
his treatises on Prelacy x with the exquisite lines on ecclesi- 
astical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which was 
published about the same time/ will understand our mean- 
ing. This is an inconsistency which, more than anything 
else, raises his character in our estimation, because it 
shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, 
in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It 
is the very struggle of the noble Othello. 2 His heart re- 
lents ; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but 
all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he 
destroys her. 

87. That from which the public character of Milton de- 
rives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to be 
mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a iov-\/ 
sworn 3 king and a persecuting hierarchy, 4 he exerted him- 
self in conjunction with others. But the glory of the v 
battle which he fought for that species of freedom which 
is the most valuable, and which was then the least under- 
stood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. v 
Thousands and tens of thousands among his contempora- 
ries raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star 
Chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the 
more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and 
the benefits which would result from the liberty of the 

§§ 87-92. Third division of the essay. Milton's prose writ- 
ings. His pa?nphlets devoted to the emancipation of human thought. 

1 See the Introduction, 14. Compare the well-known lines in II 
Penseroso beginning, " Let my due feet never fail." 

9 See Shakespeare's Othello, Act V., Scene ii. 

3 Forsworn, perjured. 

4 Hierarchy, a body of persons organized in ranks and orders for 
rule over sacred things. Here the archbishops and bishops, the 
priests and deacons of the English church. 



84 ESSAY OJV MILTON 

press l and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. 
These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to 
be the most important. He was desirous that the people 
should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and 
be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as 
from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the 
best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and 
contented themselves with pulling down the King and im- 
prisoning the malignant, 2 acted like the heedless brothers 
in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the 
train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the 
captive. They thought only of conquering when they 
should have thought of disenchanting. 

* c Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." 3 

88. To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to 
break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat 
of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all 
V/his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the 
Presbyterians ; for this he forsook them. He fought their 
perilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from 
their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those 
whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of 
thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and 
called upon Cromwell to break the secular 4 chain, and to 

1 This subject is discussed in the best known of Milton's prose works, 
the Areopagitica. It is published in the Clarendon Press Series ; also 
in Bonn's Milton's Prose Works, Vol. II. 

2 Malignant, a term applied by friends of the Parliament to all who 
took sides with the king. 

3 Comus, 815-819. 

4 Sonnet XVI. " Secular chain," church government by state-offi- 
cials, who are called secular, i.e., not religious or spiritual, 






ESSAY ON MILTON 85 

save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian >? 
wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked 
the licensing system/ in that sublime treatise which every 
statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
frontlets 2 between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, 
directed less against particular abuses than against those 
deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, 
the servile worship of eminent men, and the irrational 
dread of innovation. 

89. That he might shake the foundations of these debas- 
ing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for 
himself the boldest literary services. He never came up 
in the rear when the outworks had been carried and the 
breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. 3 At 
the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable 
energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his 
opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other 
subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers 
who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no 
more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch 
of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no 
light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleas- 
ure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to 
brave the terrible explosion. 4 Those who most disapprove 
of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he 

1 The law requiring all publications in print to be licensed bj gov- 
ernment. 

2 Frontlet, a band on the forehead, worn during prayers, on wliicli 
devout Jews inscribe sacred texts of their law. See Deuteronomy vi. 
8 ; xi. 18. The treatise alluded to is the Areopagitica. See Intro- 
duction, 14. 

3 A body of troops put upon a desperate service is called in mili- 
tary language a " forlorn hope." 

4 Allusion to the dangers of miners exploring the unventilated re- 
cesses of a coal-mine, from the presence of explosive gases which, take 
fire from a lantern, 



86 ESSAY ON MILTON 

maintained them. He^ in general, left to others the credit 
of expounding and defending the popular parts of his 
religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon 
those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated 
as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for 
divorce and regicide. 1 He attacked the prevailing systems 
of education. 2 His radiant and beneficent career resembled 
that of the god of light and fertility. 

Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. 3 

V 90. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton 
should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, 
they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to be- 
come acquainted with the full power of the English lan- 
guage. They abound with passages compared with which 
the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 4 
They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. 5 The style is stiff 
with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books 
of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher 
than in those parts of his controversial works in which his 

1 The first edition adds : " He ridiculed the Eikon." See Introduc- 
tion, 16. 

2 In his Tractate : Of Education. See Milton's Prose Works, Vol. 
III. 

3 Ovid's Metamorphoses, II., 72, 73. These are the words of the 
Sun god, describing his climbing up against the motion of the sky, 
which is supposed in ancient astronomy to revolve in a direction con- 
trary to the sun and the planets, and with a different speed. "I 
struggle against opposition : nor can I be conquered by the force 
which conquers all else ; against the swift motion of the heavens 
I ride on." For a beautiful account of these heavenly motions, see 
Cicero's de Republica, Book VI. 

4 Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a writer of English prose, who was 
noted for the splendor of his diction. 

5 Allusion to the famous pageant of Henry VIII. and Francis I. 



ESSAY ON MILTON 87 

feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of de- 
votional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majes- 
tic language, "a, sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harp- 
ing symphonies/' 1 

91. We had intended to look more closely at these per- 
formances, to analyse the peculiarities of the diction, to 
dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areo- 
pagitica, and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and 
to point out some of those magnificent passages which 
occur in the Treatise of Keformation, and the Animadver- 
sions on the Eemonstrant. But the length to which our 
remarks have already extended renders this impossible. 2 

92. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear 
ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately 
following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to 
be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. 
And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, 
we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless so- 
ever may be the offering which we bring to it. While 
this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries 
of the great poet. We are transported a hundred and fifty 
years back. 3 We can almost fancy that we are visiting 
him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the 
old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we can 
catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find 
the day ; that we are reading in the lines of his noble 
countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory 

§§ 92 to End. Conclusion : A vision of Milton. 

1 For estimates of Milton's prose style, see the essays on Milton by 
Arnold and Lowell mentioned in the Introduction. Also consult Pat- 
tison's Milton. This phrase is from The Reason of- Church Govern- 
ment, Milton's Prose Works, Vol. II. 

2 For some account of these works, see the Introduction, p. 14. 

3 This description is based upon an account given by a clergyman 
named Dr. Wright, who visited Milton in his lodgings. This account 
is preserved by Richardson, the painter, in his Notes on Milton. 



88 ESSAV ON MILTON 

and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless 
silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, 
the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to 
kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with 
which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such 
a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age 
unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness 
with which we should contest with his daughters, or with 
his Quaker friend El wood, 1 the privilege of reading Homer 
to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which 
flowed from his lips. 

93. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot 
be ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we 
have written shall in any degree excite them in other 
minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either 
the living or the dead. And we think that there is no 
more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intel- 
lect than that propensity which, for want of a better 
name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. 2 But there 
are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny 
and the severest tests, which have been tried in the fur- 
nace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in 
the balance and have not been found wanting, which have 
been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, 

1 Thomas Elwood, a young Quaker, one of the friends and disciples 
who frequented the house of Milton in his old age. His biography, a 
very interesting book, is published in the Great Biography Series, 
edited by Howells (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 

2 After James Bos well, who wrote the famous life of his idol, Samuel 
Johnson. In it he records devoutly the most minute particulars of 
Johnson's life and personal habits. Macaulay reviews Croker's edition 
of this great book in a very amusing but not very just article {Edinburgh 
Review, 1831). In it he says: "Boswell was one of the smallest men 
that ever lived, and he has beaten all biographies." " His work is 
universally allowed to be interesting, instructive, and original, yet it 
has brought the author nothing but contempt." 



ESSAY ON MILTON 89 

and which are visibly stamped with the image and super- 
scription of the Most High. 1 These great men Ave trust 
that we know how to prize ; and of these was Milton. The 
sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to 
us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flow- 
ers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger 2 sent down from, 
the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distinguished from 
the productions of other soils, not only by their superior 
bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to 
invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to 
delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the 
man who can study either the life or the writings of the 
great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not 
indeed the sublime w T orks with which his genius has en- 
riched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured 
for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured 
every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he 
looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred 
which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which 
he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. 3 

1 Phrases from the English Bible. See Daniel v. 27 ; Matthew 
xxii. 20. It would be an interesting inquiry to trace the Biblical 
phraseology all through this essay. 

2 Philip Massinger (1583-1640), an English dramatist, who edited or 
wrote largely a very popular play with this title, of which the heroine 
is a Christian martyr. The miracle described here was performed for 
the benefit of the scoffing persecutor, who challenges his victim, the 
Virgin Martyr, to send him back a flower from that Paradise to which 
she says she is going. Accordingly after her death, an angel appears 
on the stage bearing flowers and fruits from that celestial world. 

3 For a discussion of Macaulay's florid rhetoric in these and similar 
paragraphs, read Matthew Arnold's essay entitled A French Critic on 
Milton. 



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III. DIVISION AND RE-UNION, 1829-1889. 

By Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Jurisprudence in 

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State— Elements of Historical and Practical Politics," etc., etc. With 

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14 We regret that we have not space for more quotations from this uncom 
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LONGMANS, GREEN, &> CO.'S PUBLICATIONS, 

A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from 
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By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of All Souk 
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LONGMANS' SCHOOL GRAMMAR. 

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It seems to be generally conceded that English grammar is worse taught 
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LONGMANS' SCHOOL GRAMMAR.— OPINIONS. 
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geography is not mere memoriter work." — Educational Courant. 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York, 



LONGMANS, GREEN, 6- CO.' 'S PUBLICATIONS. 

LONGMANS' NEW SCHOOL ATLAS. Consisting 
of 28 quarto and 10 octavo Colored Maps (and 20 In- 
sets). 

Edited by G. G. Chisholm, M.A., B.Sc, and C. H. Leete, A.M., 
Ph.D. Engraved by Edward Stanford. With a very full Index of 
over 100,000 Names. Imp. 8vo. $1.50. 

Longmans' New School Atlas is intended, as its name implies, for use in 
schools. It offers a series of maps which it is believed will be found fully ade- 
quate for the most advanced school work, affording the material for careful and 
prolonged study, and a basis for a broad knowledge of geographic principles 
and facts. 

With this end in view three groups of maps have been prepared : first, nine 
maps exhibiting the leading facts of physical geography and human distribution 
as pertaining to the world as a whole ; second, eleven maps pertaining to North 
A?nerica, and more particularly to the United States and Canada, physical, 
political, geological, climatic, industrial, historical, and on population ; and 
third, twenty-one maps (and seventeen insets) of other parts of the world in 
their physical and political aspects. 

The Geological Map of the United States and Canada was revised by Mr. 
W. J. McGee, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and in this map the standard 
Color scheme now adopted for the maps of that Survey has been followed. 

* # * A prospectus more fully describing the Atlas, with a Specimen Map, may be 
had on application to the Publishers. 

" We heartily commend this Atlas as of very superior excellence." 

— New York Churchman. 

" Much the best Atlas to be had for a dollar and a half that has ever come 
to our notice. . . The maps are clear, the physical features being remark- 
ably well defined.'' — Journal of Pedagogy. 

" Longmans' ' New School Atlas ' is a thoroughly prepared and accurate 
work. In scope it embraces a great variety of subjects, including, in addition 
to those generally embodied, maps indicating magnetic variation, navigability of 
rivers, and other showings of interest to the student of physical, racial, social, 
or commercial facts concerning all countries." — The Chautauquan. 

"A commendable piece of work. The maps are not covered with a mass 
of detail or blackened with the names of insignificant towns. In addition to 
the usual geographical details, there are maps to illustrate the ocean currents, 
magnetic variation, density of population, and geological structure. No atlas 
of equal practical value has been issued." 

— Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, Educational Review, N. Y. 

" The work of presenting the physical and political features of the different 
countries has been done most thoroughly and admirably. The value in the 
school-room of those, however, that give the density of population, vegetation, 
isothermal lines, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, commerce, etc., is just as 
great. For a school atlas we doubt if there is anything to surpass it. " 

— School Journal, 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



